Job Security Fades for Navy Workers Caught in RIF Tide

Uncertainty has been an unwelcome but consistent presence in Wayne Gollip’s life for the past decade.

After a 22-year hitch with the Marine Corps, Gollip was laid off by a string of defense contractors, including McDonnell Douglas, Rockwell and Grumman. So the 57-year-old aircraft mechanic began to breathe easier three years ago when he was hired as a civilian employee at the massive Naval Aviation Depot on North Island, which repairs H-46 helicopters and E-2 and F-18 aircraft.

After all, Gollip thought, Uncle Sam never lays off his civil servants.

But Friday was the last day on the job for Gollip and about 165 other civilian employees at the depot, where naval aircraft have been repaired, overhauled and modified since 1919. Their jobs were eliminated after the Navy imposed a RIF(reduction in force) at the depot to make it more competitive with other public and private-sector facilities.

The layoffs, which were effective last month just one day after the U.S. Postal Service said it would reduce its work force by 47,000, illustrate how elusive job security has become, even for civil servants. They also illustrate how a lessening of world tensions--and a reduction in Defense Department budgets--is hurting Southern California’s economy.

For many civic and business observers, the reduction in force at NADEP that pushed out Gollip and about 165 other civilian employees was a preview of what’s in store for San Diego County as the nation continues to slash defense budgets.

Some San Diegans assume that the county escaped the budget ax in late June when the federal Base Closure and Realignment Commission voted not to close or reduce the size of the Naval Training enter and Marine Corp Recruit Depot.

But several business and civic groups now are seeking federal funding to determine the effect of future defense budget cuts on the local economy, where Defense Department spending accounts for at least 17% of the county’s gross regional product.

“San Diego has to start planning for the kinds of job retraining and assistance programs that will be needed in future,” said Robert Hudson, vice president of military affairs at the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce. “There could be a lot of (uniformed and civilian) people leaving the military and having to be absorbed into the community.”

The RIF cuts are driven by the Defense Department’s need to trim costs as the nation reduces the size of its military establishment. More than 2,400 civilian employees will be laid off this year at the Navy’s six naval air stations. Last year, the Air Force cut about 11,000 employees at its repair depots.

Gollip and others who lost jobs at NADEP qualify for priority placement in civilian jobs that open up at other Defense Department bases, but Gollip doubts that many permanent civil service jobs will materialize.

“I’m going to take my buns back to the Middle East,” said Gollip, who served as a civilian consultant in Iran before being chased out in 1979 when fundamentalist Muslims overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah.

“You have to be 57 years old and nuts--or that desperate (to return to the Middle East),” said Gollip, who has applied for a mechanic’s position in Kuwait. “But this time I’m divorced, I’ve got no alimony, no kids. . . . I’ll stick my . . . out on the line again if it’s necessary.”

NADEP has cut 820 positions during the RIF. Many of those cuts were handled through retirements, transfers and the resignation of employees who took jobs elsewhere. The base also hired back a substantial number of employees on a temporary basis.

The layoffs at first threatened to send more than 400 employees--fully 10% of the depot’s 4,400 civilian workers--out into the job market. The total number of layoffs fell to about 165 as employees retired, took transfers or found jobs with other employers.

Still, the depot’s RIF remained one of the single largest reductions in force by a private or public employer in recent years, said Tomas Martinez, director of the Re-Employment Center, which is operated by the San Diego Consortium and the Private Industry Council, two federally funded programs that offer job retraining and job-search counseling. NADEP’s employees, with an average of 16 years of on-the-job experience, have a dramatic need for job-search counseling because “a lot of (them) have never had to look for work,” Martinez said.

NADEP attempted to ease the transition for its employees by announcing the layoffs 60 days in advance. The facility also contracted with the Re-Employment Center to teach job-seeking skills to those who were losing jobs.

And, NADEP took the unusual step of allowing laid-off employees to spend the past seven weeks at a job-counseling center that the Re-Employment Center opened in a building near Montgomery Field. The center, which some depot employees referred to as “RIF (reduction in force) City,” offered seminars on developing self confidence, resume writing, job interviews and personal finances.

Not surprisingly, employees reacted bitterly to the cutbacks when they were announced in late June.

More than 1,000 employees at the Navy’s oldest and largest Naval aviation repair depot were told at first that they faced layoffs or transfers. More than 400 employees were told that there would be no jobs for them after Friday.

Blue-collar employees maintained that they were carrying the burden of the cuts--and that their white-collar brethren were escaping relatively unscathed.

*Younger employees complained that they bore the brunt of the layoffs because of the complex web of seniority rights that protects older workers.

* Older workers, many of them military veterans, were bitter about losing jobs to younger, but supposedly better-qualified, employees. “It’s a crying shame (to waste) all this aviation experience and talent that we have here at NADEP,” Gollip said.

Uncertainty remains, even though the layoffs are now completed, according to employees and base officials. Even after the massive reduction-in-force cuts, depot officials can offer no assurances that the depot won’t some day be closed if the Defense Department is pushed to cut spending even further.

“The future is kind of like seeing Los Angeles from 20 miles away on a real smoggy day,” said George M. Hammond Jr., a public affairs office at the base who is charged with answering media inquiries about the cutbacks. “You see some things in there, but you’re not sure what they are. That makes it very difficult for (employees) because the future is so uncertain.”

Ross Kirk, an International Assn. of Machinists leader at the depot, recently cautioned his mother--a civilian employee at the nearby Naval Training Center--that “none of us are (protected) against layoffs . . . (we) have only been given a reprieve.”

Uncertainty has been a daily companion for Oscar Steele, a 20-year Marine veteran who joined the depot as a civilian employee 15 years ago.

The bearded production controller, who needs slightly more than five more years of federal employment to qualify for a pension, learned he was being laid off earlier this summer when he was called into an office and handed a layoff notice.

“I’ve never worked out of government service,” said Steele, 53, a quality control manager who, along with his wife, Marion, recently bought a house in Lemon Grove. “I figured I had what was a secure job.”

A week ago, the former quality control manager was offered a temporary job in the office at the depot that handles hazardous wastes. But, after just two days of lugging around hazardous wastes, he was offered another temporary position as a painter’s helper.

“This morning I reported in as a full-fledged painter’s helper,” Steele said on Sept. 25. “Tonight I shave my beard. . . . I’ll get fitted for a respirator, and I’ll start stripping paint off of aircraft.”

Steele remains optimistic. “At least I have a job,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of being a painter. I don’t want to be a painter. But I’d rather have a pay check . . . than unemployment.”

The reduction in force has also disrupted the lives of younger depot employees.

Three years ago, Jeff Brockelsby, 33, quit a data processing job with a private company to join the depot, which promised increased job security.

Brockelsby, a military veteran who commuted to North Island from San Jacinto in Riverside County each day, has narrowed his search to Riverside and San Bernardino counties. He is hesitant to accept another job with the federal government because “there doesn’t seem to be job security there anymore.”

Late last week, Brockelsby gathered his papers at “RIF City” and prepared for the final trip home. “I can go any time,” Brockelsby said. “I’ve gotten my termination papers, and I don’t have a job.”

Brockelsby has sent out more than 2 dozen resumes in recent weeks. But, “at this particular time, I don’t have one single response,” Brockelsby said. “I guess these things take time.”

On Monday, Brockelsby headed for the state unemployment office in Riverside County. He was told to expect his first unemployment compensation check on about Oct. 12.