THE BUSH BUDGET : REGIONAL REPORT : Defense Proposals Trouble Workers : Aerospace: Many express concern that Bush’s efforts to boost the economy will threaten their jobs.
With the Cold War over and the economy sagging, aerospace worker Greg Johnson said he and his colleagues can understand why President Bush has proposed deep cuts in defense spending.
But neither Johnson nor his peers at Northrop Corp., which will eliminate 1,500 jobs in its B-2 bomber program in response to the cutbacks, wants his job sacrificed to the new political realities.
“As a taxpayer, I think it’s a positive move,” said Johnson, a 43-year-old technician, during a lunch break outside Northrop’s sprawling B-2 bomber plant in Pico Rivera. “But if you are part of the 1,500, it ain’t so hot.”
In interviews at defense plants across Southern California on Thursday, workers tempered their praise for Bush’s proposals for curing the economy’s ills and living in a less hostile world by voicing uncertainty over their own futures.
“We are delighted that we are in peaceful times,” said Nancy Leonard, a graphic artist at the Northrop Pico Rivera facility. “But we will be saddened if we are the ones that will have lost their jobs.”
“I’m definitely concerned right now,” said Chris Ferrara, a 25-year-old Northrop painter who is engaged to be married within a few months. “It’s a bad time to worry about losing your job. It will be very difficult to find another one.”
In California alone, an estimated 200,000 jobs will be lost by 1997 as a result of defense spending cutbacks.
Some defense workers warned that the industry layoffs would offset any benefits from the President’s proposals to boost the economy, including the $5,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers.
“There are two things going opposite of each other,” said Cor Van Overeem, a quality control manager at L’Garde Inc., a small Tustin research firm that specializes in weapons and space systems.
“(Bush) wants to cut back on defense and that would place a lot of people out of jobs,” he said. “The little guys are going to lose their jobs and they’re not going to be able to buy their first home.”
Other workers feared the cuts--and a new emphasis on research and development rather than weapons production--would harm much more than the nation’s defense industry.
“What bothers me the most is that we’re losing our industrial base, we’re becoming a totally service economy,” said Don Chenoweth, 38, a 15-year employee who works on the Advanced Cruise Missile line at the General Dynamics Convair Division plant in San Diego. Bush specifically targeted the ACM program for cuts.
“We can’t just have engineers designing these weapons systems,” Chenoweth said. Politicians “have their feet firmly planted in the clouds. I’m scared for the future.”
Some of the President’s proposals set well with a few of the defense workers, however. Paul Bevilaqua, a researcher at Lockheed Corp.’s famed “Skunk Works” aerospace research and engineering group in Burbank said his company might benefit from incentives aimed at boosting research and development.
“That’s what we do best,” Bevilaqua said. “It’s a good opportunity for us . . . since we don’t do big production and what the government is talking about is more R&D; and limited production.”
But the new world order has created an age-old problem for Cyndie Anderson, 31.
On March 13--”Black Friday,” Anderson quipped--the Convair employee will lose her job, displaced by a more senior worker laid off in another division of the company.
Anderson is understandably upset by her forced exit from the shrinking defense industry. “I’m one of those ex-military types who has lots of experience,” Anderson said after a recent shift change at Convair’s Lindbergh Field plant. “I want a job. . . . I want to work, I want to do what I’m good at.”
At Datametrics Corp. in Chatsworth, several employees said they’re worried about their jobs even though the company, which makes rugged computer printers and keyboards for operators of the Patriot and the Trident II missiles, now has plenty of work and its employment has been stable since 1989.
“Before, if you got laid off at one place, somebody else had a big contract” that provided work, said Adelayda Rettberg, an assembler. “Now if you get laid off, there’s no where to go.”
Lockheed worker Karen Villella is planning for change. She said she’s taking liberal arts courses at college to earn a teaching credential, just in case she gets laid off. “You never know when it could happen,” she added.
The defense cuts outlined by the President in his State of the Union message Tuesday night came as no surprise to many workers.
“Everybody expected this to happen,” said Northrop engineer Carl Larez, 47. However, on the morning after the President’s speech, “people at work were kind of down. Everybody is worried.”
Despite the gloom, Larez remained somewhat optimistic about his own prospects. “I feel I could get work somewhere else if I get laid off,” he said.
Also contributing to this story were staff writers Greg Johnson in San Diego, Cristina Lee in Orange County and James F. Peltz in the San Fernando Valley.
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