THE HUGHES CUTBACKS : Aftershock at Hughes : In Fullerton, 6,800 Ponder Unsure Future
Hughes Aircraft Co.’s 6,800 employees returned for another workday Tuesday but found their thoughts and conversations drifting back to the news that their plant would close next year and that hundreds of them could begin to receive layoff notices in about six weeks.
Company managers had few answers, despite the barrage of questions from workers about how the layoffs would be determined or which departments would be shifted to other company facilities.
On Monday, Hughes announced a corporate consolidation that will result in 4,400 layoffs in Southern California and the virtual shutdown of its 350-acre Fullerton facility by the end of next year.
“The managers around here will say ‘decisions are still being finalized’ whenever they’re asked about a specific job,” said Tony Duenas, a command and control systems engineer.
“But I don’t think even the middle managers here know what’s going to happen, they’re just being politically correct,” he said.
Along with Fullerton, the Hughes cutbacks will occur in El Segundo, where Hughes has 7,800 workers, and at some of Hughes’ smaller defense systems plants, such as in Long Beach and Santa Barbara. Production from the company’s surface ship systems division--now in Fullerton with about 350 workers--will be shifted mostly to Tucson and partly to San Diego.
The company will provide laid-off workers with 60% of their salary for up to 12 weeks, depending on their tenure, along with company-paid medical benefits for three months and $1,000 to help pay for retraining.
Duenas, 44, and others compared notes and discussed their options should they be among those to lose their jobs. Despite the grim news, employees said they mostly tried to keep an upbeat attitude.
They faced constant reminders, however, of the plant’s fate. Some meetings started late because workers were still talking about Monday’s announcement, employees continued to send off a heavy load of electronic mail and there was plenty of gallows humor. One joke making the rounds, workers said, was that after the consolidation, it would be easy to get promoted because all of the smart people would have left voluntarily.
“People were trying to get back to work, but it wasn’t completely there,” said one union representative at the plant. The Carpenters Union represents about 1,000 workers in Fullerton.
“There are a few meetings with managers, but we’ve still got contracts and projects going that we have to work on,” said engineer Mario Obejas, as he paused just outside the door to one of the enormous beige buildings on the rolling Hughes campus.
Ken Dahlberg, one of the two senior managers at the Fullerton plant, held a question-and-answer session for workers early Tuesday morning. But he had few of the specifics that the workers were seeking, and employees were told that they would have more details in 30 to 60 days. In fact, it was unclear where Dahlberg himself would be relocated, some employees said.
Dahlberg recently had a custom-built house completed in Villa Park. But now, like many other Hughes workers in Fullerton, he was looking at a much longer commute if he were to transfer to an office in Los Angeles County.
Doug Erickson, an engineer with the undersea systems division, which is expected to move to El Segundo, said many of his co-workers worry that longer commutes will mean they have less time to spend with their families. At a meeting with managers, he said, “One woman asked if the company was planning to provide her children with day care.”
But it is too soon for the company to have answers to such specific questions, said a Hughes spokesman. “Everyone wants to know how it is going to affect them personally and we just don’t know yet,” he said.
Some workers said they think the company knows more details about the consolidation plan than it has revealed.
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“I guess I’m not as worried as I could be,” said mechanic David Lopez, who has been in Fullerton for 16 years. “It’s some people, especially single parents or (those who are) close to retiring” that would be hardest hit by a layoff.
Lopez, 45, said the mood at the Fullerton plant Tuesday was “as if you’d just missed an airplane or a bus”--with much anxiety about whether the next one would have room for all the passengers. But he said he is “trying to be optimistic” about his future.
If offered a transfer to either El Segundo or Long Beach, Lopez said he will probably take the offer even if it means a longer commute than the half-hour it now takes him to drive from Pomona.
Lopez said he came to Hughes after working as a hairstylist in Oxnard. After beginning as a relatively unskilled mechanic, he was trained for the advanced assembly tasks of several different Hughes divisions.
If laid off, Lopez said, he would likely research job opportunities at smaller companies.
“I don’t think I’d just want to add my application to a pile, you really need to know something about a company before you just go in and apply,” he said. “I’d say to them something like, ‘I’ll work for you for two weeks, and if it doesn’t work out then you don’t have to pay me,’ ” Lopez said.
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About 700 employees will remain at two Hughes buildings at the Fullerton site. One of them, Connie Matthis, 45, said those in her division expect Hughes will eventually shut the remaining buildings some day.
“They can’t last more than a couple or three years,” she said while talking with other employees during a late-morning cigarette break outside.
Matthis said she wakes up at 3:30 a.m. each day to make the drive from Inglewood in time to begin her shift at 6 a.m. as a microelectronic assembler in Hughes’ radar division.
She said she had heard most of Monday’s announcement in advance from her landlord, a Hughes employee at another site. But while her job seems safe from the present round of cuts, Matthis said she doubts the 18 years she has worked in Orange County with Hughes will assure that she will be offered a transfer rather than a layoff notice in coming years.
“Let’s face it, look at the economy today--I don’t think you can stay in one place,” she said.
Hughes has said it will try to match present employees with future job openings. But individuals will have to put some effort into such searches as well, Matthis said, referring to a copy of Hughes’ current job listings she carried.
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Tony Duenas came to work for Hughes in 1973 after graduating from Cal State Long Beach with a degree in electrical engineering.
He had not expected to stay at the company this long, but said the chance to work on air traffic and air defense systems has kept him interested. Duenas has also worked on Hughes projects overseas, including three years in South Korea.
Job security is a frequent topic of conversation these days, he said. Late last year, Duenas moved his wife and children to Saudi Arabia where he worked on an air defense project that is expected to last at least another five years. After only two months, Duenas was recalled to Fullerton.
He said he was fortunate that he and his wife hadn’t sold their house in Norco before they left. Instead they had left their college-age son and his grandmother there. “We had all our furniture, our cars here waiting for us,” he said.
Duenas said he expects his current job will be moved to Long Beach along with his division, which would add another 30 minutes to his drive. “I guess I’ll have to get into a van pool,” he said.
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Obejas of Huntington Beach, whose job involves air traffic systems, said he received a phone message from his mother in Miami Tuesday morning after she had seen a televised report of the plant closure. He planned to tell her that she shouldn’t worry, because with his division is likely to remain.
Though others are studying their career options as Hughes downsizes, Obejas said, he isn’t worried yet.
“Right now, I don’t see a need to re-evaluate. Had I not been one of the ones whose division is being kept, then I think it would be time to take a deep look at all my options.”
Obejas, 35, said that many employees blame President Clinton and congressional Democrats for the budget cuts that have hurt the local defense industry, although he thought that was “misdirected frustration.”
“Cheney was downsizing too,” he said, referring to Dick Cheney, secretary of defense under President George Bush.
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Company will use federal, state funds for employment centers. D6
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Times staff writers Don Lee and Hope Hamashige contributed to this story.
