Group Is Working to Keep Hughes in Fullerton : Industry: The economic development team has met with aircraft company officials in the hope of heading off a move.
Unwilling to wait passively for Hughes Aircraft Co.’s decision on whether it will close its giant Fullerton defense electronics plant in a major streamlining, an Orange County economic development group has begun meeting with officials of the aerospace company to promote this area’s attractiveness.
Details of the first meeting, held in late May, are being kept secret. But Ken Moore, executive director of the Orange County Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the Hughes retention team has offered to assist in the development of cost-cutting methods at the plant, which employs 6,800 people.
The team is headed by Wayne Wedin, chairman of the Orange County Economic Development Consortium, and includes Moore, Fullerton City Manager James Armstrong, Fullerton Mayor A.B. (Buck) Catlin--who was recalled by voters last week over unrelated issues--and Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton). A representative of the state Trade and Commerce Department also attended the meeting. Catlin, who has not left office yet, will probably be replaced after a new Fullerton mayor is seated.
Moore characterized the session as the opening round in what the group expects to be a series of meetings. Wedin said he has spoken with Hughes officials by telephone several times since the face-to-face meeting.
Hughes said last month that it is conducting a streamlining study and that layoffs would probably be part of the final plan. Michael Smith, Hughes vice chairman, said in an employee newsletter that four of the company’s California sites, including the Fullerton defense electronics plant, are involved.
Among the options believed to be under study are the shutdown of one or more of the facilities; scaling back operations and laying off workers at one or more sites, or consolidating several of the plants at one existing site.
The Orange County retention group hopes to persuade Hughes that it makes most sense to use the 350-acre Fullerton site as a campus for relocation of other operations--an alternative that would probably result in Hughes’ Orange County employment growing.
The other sites involved in the Hughes streamlining study are two defense plants in El Segundo, with a total of 8,000 employees, and a communications and logistics equipment factory in Long Beach with 970 workers. Altogether, the company has 34,000 employees in California, including 8,100 in Orange County.
A Hughes spokesman said Smith viewed the effort by the Orange County group “as a very positive move” and that it was the first effort by any group in California to try to work with the company as it seeks to trim costs.
While Hughes could decide to close the Fullerton campus and relocate jobs there to other plants in Los Angeles and Virginia, the Orange County group wants the company to consider the under-used site as viable location to which other Hughes operations could be moved.
Only about two-thirds of the space available at the Fullerton site is now in use, Hughes has said. At its peak in 1986, 14,500 people worked there. The company is considering a plan to obtain new zoning for some of the property so it could be sold to a developer.
The Hughes streamlining report is being prepared by an executive group led by Smith, who heads the company’s new Hughes Aerospace & Electronics Co. subsidiary.
The Hughes team’s recommendations are expected to be complete by late July, to be forwarded to Hughes Chairman Michael Armstrong. A final decision is expected by late fall.
Moore said the Orange County group expects to meet in person with Smith and other Hughes officials again before the recommendations are prepared.
