McDonnell Douglas to Lay Off 1,000 Workers : Aerospace: The company will cut space station employees in Huntington Beach, Houston and St. Louis.
McDonnell Douglas Aerospace will lay off 1,000 space station workers by January in response to the Clinton Administration’s decision to dramatically scale back plans for the orbiting laboratory, The Times has learned.
The layoffs, which will affect workers in Huntington Beach, Houston and St. Louis, are part of a larger effort by NASA and its contractors to eliminate more than 4,000 of the 11,000 jobs in the space station work force.
Precise figures on the number of layoffs expected at the McDonnell Douglas plant in Huntington Beach were not available Thursday, but sources said they would be substantial.
McDonnell Douglas expects its subcontractors to let go another 1,000 workers, while cuts at Grumman Corp., the Boeing Co. and other aerospace firms are likely to push the private sector job toll even higher, officials said.
In addition, about 1,300 government engineers and managers will be cut from the space station payroll by early next year, according to NASA officials. Some of those civil service employees will be reassigned to other jobs, while others may choose to participate in a recently announced buyout program.
The reductions, which would eliminate more than a third of the government and industry jobs now devoted to the space station, are largely the result of President Clinton’s decision earlier this year to redesign and reduce the cost of the orbiting space laboratory. The space station is intended to serve as a permanent platform for biological and industrial materials research.
“We’re looking at a substantial reduction in the number of people working on (the) space station, because we’re working with an extremely tight budget,” said NASA spokesman Geoffrey H. Vincent. “The ultimate decisions for the fine-tuning of the numbers comes from the contractors. But it is clear that, when we drive down the funding levels, it’s going to drive down the work force.”
The layoffs come as the Administration is negotiating a deal to bring the Russians into the space station program as full partners, raising concerns on Capitol Hill about the loss of even more jobs in an industry already racked by cutbacks in the Defense Establishment.
“It certainly will hurt. We’ll just have to try to get through it,” said McDonnell Douglas spokesman Thomas E. Williams, who confirmed that the company is moving to cut 1,000 of its 2,200 space station jobs. That figure includes 230 workers who were let go last month.
As part of the plan to scale back the space station, NASA has told McDonnell Douglas that it will receive only $427 million for space station work in the fiscal year that began last Friday, down from more than $700 million last year.
The company suffered a major blow last summer when the space station redesign team decided to drop the McDonnell Douglas-designed propulsion system in favor of an existing Lockheed system built for a military satellite. If the Russian deal goes through, the Lockheed system, known as “Bus One,” could be replaced by a Russian design.
At the height of its space station activity last spring, McDonnell Douglas Aerospace had about 2,500 workers assigned directly to the program.
With a total of 21,000 employees, the company has major bases in St. Louis and Huntington Beach. It also has facilities in Colorado and adjacent to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville and the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
After McDonnell Douglas, the biggest loser is Long Island, N.Y.-based Grumman Corp., which will see its space station labor force drop from 860 to 50, according to NASA sources.
Under the old space station program, Grumman was responsible for integrating the work of the program’s three major contractors--McDonnell Douglas, Boeing’s missile and space division in Huntsville, Ala., and the Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell International, based in Canoga Park.
As part of the redesign, NASA has made Boeing the prime contractor, eliminating almost all of Grumman’s work.
A Boeing spokesman in Huntsville said his company will suffer a net loss of 200 to 300 jobs. At Rocketdyne, which is building the space station’s giant solar arrays and electrical system, a spokeswoman said the effects of the redesign will be minimal. The company employs about 800 workers who are involved in the program, down from 1,000 a few months ago.
To meet lower annual budget goals, NASA has been forced to stretch out the new space station’s construction schedule by three years, to 2003. Every additional year costs the program about $2 billion.
The Clinton Administration now estimates that the scaled-back space station will require another $19 billion before it is ready to permanently accommodate a four-member crew in 2003. That is in addition to $8 billion already spent on space station development and other $3 billion for indirect costs.
* ROCKWELL SHIFTS JOBS: O.C. will gain 750 jobs as aerospace giant moves workers. D1
