VERNON : Alcoa Workers Look Worriedly to Future

After 28 years as a parts inspector at the city’s Alcoa plant, Charles Adams may retire years earlier than he had planned.

Adams, 50, said that last month’s surprise announcement by the Aluminum Corp. of America that it will close the 56-year-old facility has left him with few options. Because of his long tenure, Adams is eligible through his union membership for retirement benefits.

“I may try to get some training or some kind of schooling,” Adams said. “It’s hard. I just don’t know.”

And he is not alone.

George Rodriguez, who has been casting aluminum plates at the plant for 15 years, said many Alcoa employees did not graduate from high school and have weak reading and writing skills. “These people are concerned they don’t even have basic skills required of any job,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez is cautiously optimistic, saying he would like to study to become an electrician or a computer repairman--but that even with such retraining, California’s job market is flooded with qualified applicants.

A majority of the 700 workers who will lose their jobs or be relocated to Alcoa plants in Cleveland, Baltimore and Chandler, Ariz., expect to hear this week when their last working day will be, said John Tibbits, 35, a 17-year Alcoa employee and union officer. The company said the gradual shutdown will begin May 13 and be completed by November.

Alcoa announced the closure March 15 after officials failed to win wage concessions from the plant’s 481 union employees in an effort to cut costs. Union officials said members did not wish to negotiate further because they believed they had made enough concessions in the past. The union was in the first year of a three-year contract, negotiated last summer, with no wage increases.

But union representatives have yet to negotiate a “close-out” agreement with the company to determine how jobs will be phased out.

Gene Hurd, president of Local 808 of the United Auto Workers of America, said that Alcoa employees are frustrated with the lack of communication between the company and the union.

“Workers know it will eventually come to pass that they will have to leave. We just haven’t been given a list of what areas will go first,” said Hurd, who has maintained equipment at the facility for 17 years.

Many of the electricians, carpenters, toolmakers and mechanics who mold aluminum into baseball bats, aircraft landing gear and airplane skeletons will have to change careers in order to find new jobs, said Ned Scott, a UAW negotiator.

“A majority of these workers will need training in another field due to the fact that the aluminum business is virtually incapacitated now,” said Ned Scott, a UAW negotiator.

With reduced operations at Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas and other Southern California manufacturers of aircraft parts, Alcoa workers have few options in the arena of aircraft parts manufacturing.

Many may find work at other manufacturing companies through the UAW Labor Employment & Training Corps in Bell, Scott said, although the nonprofit, union affiliate only provides training when positions are available at other plants.

Adams, who sits on a UAW membership committee to find employment-training programs for Alcoa workers, said the panel has had a difficult time finding programs that will fit members’ needs.