Lockheed Plans Leave Staff, City Shellshocked
Conversations in the cafeteria at Lockheed Corp.’s headquarters were quieter, less jocular last week as employees considered where they would be working next year, if they will be working at all.
“Usually there are more people,” said Brenda Forman, the company’s director of marketing policy, as she looked around the sunny dining room at the few full tables. “Maybe they’re out for a drink with their friends.”
Lockheed and Martin Marietta Corp. announced a week ago that they would merge, creating a defense-industry behemoth with $23 billion in annual sales. The combined Lockheed Martin will be based in Bethesda, Md., Martin Marietta’s headquarters.
As the top executives await government antitrust approval and the Calabasas community braces for the departure, the 250 mid-level managers and their support staff consider their fate. These are the well-heeled members of the work force; they wait not with picket signs and angry news conferences but with controlled trepidation.
“I don’t know whether I’ll have a job or not,” Forman said. “If you stack up what the cold, hard facts are, you can get pretty scared. But the cold, hard facts don’t always tell the whole story.”
The story for the employees and the community they will leave behind began on Aug. 30, when Lockheed Chairman Daniel M. Tellep wrote a letter to the employees saying the company would leave Calabasas and some of its jobs when Lockheed relocates. To be sure, many of the employees had already heard the news.
“I cannot guarantee to each of you that you can retain your job,” Tellep wrote. “Our commitment is to be open in communicating with you, and our objective is to be fair and equitable with people whose jobs may be eliminated.”
What the chairman also said, in subsequent memos and conferences, is that roughly half of the management-level jobs will come from each company. Support staff, he has said, could come from the Maryland area “simply because of logistical considerations.” A small satellite group will remain in the area, but at a new site.
The jobs that are secure are the 10 executive positions at the very top, with Tellep at the helm. The rest are up for grabs.
When the employees talk about Maryland, they do so guardedly. First, there is the worry about getting the invitation to stay on; then there is the worry about whether to take it.
Charles A. Lileikis, who is in charge of purchasing for the Calabasas facility, said he looked up weather statistics for Maryland when he heard about the news. Forty-five inches a year of rain, he reported to the lunch table, winter highs of 33 degrees.
“I don’t think Bethesda is going to compare to what we have here,” he said. “You look out and you have the trees, the sunshine.
“But,” he added, “we’ll go if we get asked.”
Some will not be asked. Judy Lubin, an administrative secretary and a single mother supporting two children, ages 19 and 22, said she is anticipating being out of work.
“I’m at a level where they can replace me and my skills anyplace across the nation,” she said. “Frankly, now I feel abandoned.”
If the Lockheed employees are nervous about what may be in store for each of them individually, some Calabasas business people are disheartened about what is certain--that a population of well-paid workers is leaving.
The Lockheed headquarters is non-polluting, it keeps a low profile, it contributes to the city’s tax base, and best of all, opens its wallet when asked by various needy community organizations.
“It’s really sad, because they are not just financial benefactors, but they have been involved personally in the community,” said Arlene Bernholtz, executive assistant of the Calabasas Chamber of Commerce.
Barbara Reinike, Lockheed’s community relations manager, was a president of the Calabasas Chamber of Commerce in 1988 and still sits on the board. She is also one of the founders of the Old Town/Calabasas Coalition.
Reinike has seen to it that Lockheed helps sponsor local fairs and fund-raisers, and helps influence local advisory boards that seek to preserve a quiet, small-town Calabasas.
The hallway outside the cafeteria is hung with testaments to Lockheed’s local role. The L.A. chapter of the Black MBA Assn. honored the company for its efforts, as did Cal Lutheran University, the Ventura County NAACP and the local branch of the United Way, among others.
In 1992, for example, Lockheed contributed more than $3.5 million to arts, civic and education programs in California--dollars that charity groups fear will head east with the corporation. In addition, Lileikis said the firm spends almost $5 million annually in Southern California for headquarters operations. Those dollars are spent on everything from cafeteria food to landscaping, from printing services to pens and paper.
“Eighty percent of it comes from local suppliers,” Lileikis said. “It will be done locally over there for the most part. It’s all going to move.”
California has already suffered its biggest Lockheed convulsions. During World War II the corporation employed 90,000 in Burbank, where it has no presence now. Just four years ago, it announced it would move 9,500 Burbank jobs to Marietta, Ga., and eliminate the balance of 4,500 Burbank jobs.
Of the 20,000 Lockheed jobs left in California, including 3,000 at Palmdale’s “Skunk Works” facility, the 250 corporate jobs heading out might seem a paltry concern--this is no replay of the dark days two years ago when General Motors closed its Van Nuys plant, putting 2,600 people out of work.
But it is not inconsequential to merchants in the area.
Just down the street from the four-story brick building, Danny Javaherian heard the news about the impending move and decided he had made a bad investment.
Javaherian has spent many mornings and afternoons over the past 7 1/2 years ferrying Lockheed employees to and from work after leaving their cars to be serviced at his Calabasas Unocal 76 gas station. They were loyal customers, he said.
A month ago, he bought new gas pumps. All the shiny new machines take credit and ATM cards right at the service island, he noted proudly, saving the customer the trip to the window. Now he thinks that upgrade might not have been such a good idea.
“They are a lot of business for us,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s sad. It hurts.”
The Country Inn at Calabasas, the sales manager said, is likely to see a 10% drop in business. The hotel, less than a mile from the headquarters, has housed Lockheed employees from around the country as well as people in town to do business with the corporation.
In addition to the $20,000 in utility taxes the city will lose, said Calabasas City Manager Charles Cate, it will also miss the $200,000 in bed taxes that the inn generated from Lockheed business.
The headmaster at the private Calabasas Viewpoint School, Bob Dworkoski, said his school has enrolled Lockheed children in the past and will miss the potential students of the future.
Ron Bryman, manager of the Cosmos Grill and Rotisserie, said he does not worry so much about a drop in business as about the community’s declining spirits.
Others tried put the departure into perspective. Lileikis, the Lockheed purchasing director, said he has tried to be realistic.
“Something like this would happen eventually,” he said matter-of-factly. “You do something about your business base and consolidate or we would die out anyway.”
Times correspondent Frank Manning contributed to this story.
