Hughes May Cut 3,400 Jobs Over 2 Years : Aerospace: El Segundo and Fullerton facilities are targeted. Company says it must get as lean as possible in order to compete.

Hughes Aerospace & Electronics said Monday that it plans to cut perhaps 3,400 jobs--most of them in Southern California--over the next two years as part of a previously announced consolidation.

The Los Angeles-based aerospace company plans to eliminate jobs at its military electronics and systems plants in El Segundo and Fullerton as well as at its missiles systems operation in Tucson, according to company spokesman Richard Dore.

Those three Hughes operations have already been cut heavily, Dore said, adding that most of the 13,000 jobs eliminated by parent Hughes Aircraft since 1992 have been in those units.

The Hughes spokesman said the company has not determined how many jobs will be lost at each location, but Southern California, which has been battered for several years by deep cuts in the aerospace and defense industries, will probably feel most of the pain.

“Most of our employment is in Southern California,” Dore acknowledged.

The company will not know exactly how many jobs will be lost until July or August, when several company task forces are expected to deliver their recommendations on streamlining operations.

Hughes Aircraft raised the prospect of plant closings in May as part of the consolidation of its defense operations into a new Washington-based subsidiary, Hughes Aerospace & Electronics, with 34,000 workers. But at the time, the company did not quantify the number of job losses.

In the wake of shrinking defense budgets, Hughes has no choice but to cut jobs and costs to remain competitive for the remaining contracts, Dore said.

“Companies are going to have to get as lean as they possibly can to give the highest level of quality at the lowest price possible . . . because price will be the driving factor,” he said.

Hughes, which is the largest industrial employer in California, has a total work force of 50,000.