BURBANK : Aerospace Plant Near Airport to Close

Burbank will take another economic hit at the end of this summer with the closure of the UNC Pacific Airmotive Corp. plant, also known as Station 88, situated on Hollywood Way near Burbank Airport.

On July 8, employees at Station 88 received notice of the planned closure, as required by the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

The closure, which will take place no sooner than Sept. 7, will affect about 60 workers, according to Weldon Walshe, UNC director of human resources.

The closure is a part of an overall restructuring of UNC, announced by the company in late June. The work currently done at Station 88 will be shifted to plants in New Jersey and Florida.

“What’s driving the closure,” said Walshe, “is the aircraft industry. There’s just not enough business to support all of the repair and overhaul companies.”

PAC, one of the oldest aerospace companies in California, opened its first plant in downtown Los Angeles in 1927. The Burbank plant opened in 1948, when it became the first union closed-shop plant in the San Fernando Valley.

PAC is an aircraft repair and overhaul company, and has, over the years, been involved in many different aspects of repair.

At one time, it repaired engines on both large and small planes and even sold parts. During this time, PAC was the biggest overhaul and repair shop in the world, employing over 1,500 people.

Since 1970, however, PAC has been a subsidiary of several different companies, and has repeated changed its focus.

Since that time, “it seems like it’s been a constant phase-down,” said Ralph Baltau, chief shop steward, an employee since 1964 when he was 22.

As recently as 1992, there were 240 production workers at Station 88, but difficult times forced cutbacks.

In September, 1993, the union began bargaining with the UNC for its new contract and was told that the work force had to be cut from 195 to 38 by the end of the year.

The company kept all those that wanted to stay until the end of last year, but when work resumed in the new year, there were only about 45 workers remaining.