TRW Cut 3,300 Area Jobs in ’92 : Aerospace: The firm, which recently eliminated a Redondo Beach unit, reduced staffing nationwide by 22% because of less government spending on spy satellites.
TRW has quietly eliminated 3,300 jobs from its Los Angeles-area operations during 1992, including 1,600 through layoffs--part of 5,000 job cuts in its aerospace business nationwide, the company said Wednesday.
The job losses reduce TRW’s employment in Redondo Beach, San Bernardino and Dominguez Hills to 9,900, down from 13,200 at the start of the year. The Cleveland-based firm’s overall aerospace and defense business now employs 18,000 people, down from 23,000 at the start of the year--a 22% reduction.
The cutbacks apparently reflect reduced spending by the Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency for secret surveillance satellites, as well as the overall reduction in military spending.
In addition, TRW reorganized its aerospace business last month, eliminating its space and defense sector in Redondo Beach and forming three separate geographically-based groups reporting to headquarters.
TRW is one of a few aerospace companies that have not provided advance disclosure of major job cuts, though TRW employees have privately told the Los Angeles Times that the company was undertaking an aggressive layoff program.
A company spokeswoman said Wednesday that it “is just not our style to address these issues in the press.” In 1990, the firm trimmed 1,600 jobs without a prior announcement. The spokeswoman said the structure of the company’s business makes it difficult to predict employment trends.
The company said it could not forecast whether more job cuts would occur in 1993.
After years of continued growth, spending on the military space program has begun to decline for the first time. Congress cut the nation’s secret intelligence budget by 6% for 1993, the largest portion of which goes for secret spy satellite production. TRW is a major supplier of electronic eavesdropping spacecraft.
Earlier this year, TRW Chairman Joseph Gorman said the outlook for military space programs was “uncertain” at best.
“There are so many variables out there, so many imponderables,” Gorman said in October.
“We’re kidding ourselves if we think we can predict with any reasonable degree of certainty, and with any real degree of precision, how things are going to unfold in the space and defense area, and particularly in the military space area.”
Wolfgang Demisch, aerospace analyst at UBS Securities, said the aerospace industry is losing about 10% of its work force per year, though the space industry has been taking it on the chin a bit harder.
TRW’s cutbacks this year are higher than some of its rivals. For example, Lockheed Missiles & Space Co. in Sunnyvale, Calif., one of TRW’s main competitors, has cut 2,576 jobs this year nationwide, to 21,371--a 14% reduction.
“The problem is fairly simple,” Demisch said. “There is only so much money to go around.”
