Fairchild’s Controls Division Will Be Moved to Maryland
Fairchild Space and Defense Corp. said Tuesday that it notified employees that its Fairchild Controls division in Manhattan Beach will be moved to Germantown, Md., eliminating 240 local aerospace jobs.
The firm is seeking to reduce costs by locating all three of its divisions in Maryland but also has become dissatisfied with the cost of doing business in the Los Angeles area, general counsel Richard Sherman said.
The news comes on the eve of the unveiling of a long-awaited plan to stem industrial defections from the state--a report by a commission headed by former Olympics organizer and Baseball Commissioner Peter V. Ueberroth.
Division President Robert Brosius told Fairchild employees that California officials did not respond to a call while the firm was weighing its move. In any event, the company’s decision was sealed by what it considered the economic disadvanages of staying in California.
Sherman said that a final decision on the move is still pending but that it seems so likely that the firm decided to notify employees Tuesday.
The exit of Fairchild, which is owned by the French firm Matra, would be just the latest in a long line of departures by aerospace firms from Los Angeles. The defections started in the mid-1980s, with the former Hughes Helicopters Co. Since then, units of Lockheed, Northrop, Hughes Aircraft, Allied-Signal and Western Gear, among others, have left.
The Fairchild division produces fluid valves and environmental control systems for the space shuttle, expendable rockets and military aircraft targeting pods. The operation moved to California from the East Coast in the mid-1960s, during the heyday of the space race, Sherman said.
