Pending Merger Fails to Upset Workers : Business: Employees say it’s too early to worry about two Woodland Hills health-care firms joining forces.

Workers at the two health-care companies scheduled to merge into the state’s second-largest managed care provider expressed few fears on Tuesday, despite warnings that several hundred jobs could be lost.

As the mostly white-collar workers left their air-conditioned offices to enjoy lunch outdoors, many said it was simply too early, and the details of the merger too scarce, to fret about their futures.

“Maybe in six months or a year, then I’ll worry,” said one woman outside Health Systems Inc. “They said it will be a year or more before anything happens.”

Employees at Health Systems and WellPoint Health Networks International Inc., which house 6,000 workers in neighboring office buildings in sprawling Warner Center, said they knew little about the deal and had learned most of what they did know by reading newspapers.

“They haven’t told us anything,” another woman said as she soaked up the warm weather. “I don’t have anything to worry about yet.”

Company officials agreed, saying it was too early to worry since no list of redundant departments or jobs had been drawn up yet, and no cuts had been defined.

“This is a very complicated, complex transaction,” said WellPoint spokesman Larry Bryant. “There is no list of jobs or list of people” on the cutting block, he said.

Some employees, however, said the news--and lack of detail--was beginning to fray nerves.

Laura Bennett, a contract employee for Health Systems, said she had worn her headphones at work all day Monday and missed the merger announcement. When she took off the headphones Tuesday and heard the news, “I realized that must be why everybody’s in such a funk,” the 27-year-old said.

WellPoint and Health Systems announced the two companies would merge into a health-care giant--the state’s second largest after Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente--pending regulatory approval. Officials from both companies said they would try to trim $200 million in administrative costs at the new, as-yet-unnamed company, possibly leading to several hundred layoffs.

Health Systems also announced, however, that last week it had garnered a $2.5-billion Pentagon contract to provide health benefits to military personnel that could mean 800 to 1,000 new jobs for the company.

“The bad news is it could result in the loss of about 500 jobs,” Health Systems spokesman Don Prial said of the merger. The good news, he said, is that the company would almost certainly look first at any employees laid off when filling new positions created by the Pentagon contract.