Raytheon to Cut 650 More Jobs in Fullerton

Raytheon Co., as part of an ongoing restructuring, said it will chop an additional 650 jobs from the defense electronics company’s payroll in Fullerton by the end of next year, bringing total job losses at the former Hughes Electronics Co. plant to 1,150 since Raytheon acquired the operation in December.

The new cuts will occur as Raytheon transfers the work of the Naval and Maritime Systems unit based in Fullerton to a plant in Rhode Island.

In January, shortly after acquiring all of Hughes’ defense operations, Raytheon said it would eliminate 500 jobs at the Fullerton facility as it transferred a microelectronics manufacturing operation there to a new location, either in Texas or Massachusetts.

When the cutting is done, the Fullerton plant will employ about 2,000 people--down from 15,000 in its heyday as a Hughes Aircraft Co. campus in 1985. Much of the 370-acre property, which Hughes retained, has been sold for housing development in the past year.

Lexington, Mass.-based Raytheon has been realigning its operations since acquiring the Hughes defense business.

The company said Wednesday that it will cut its nationwide work force by 14,000 jobs, or 16%, with 4,300 of the jobs coming from California operations.

As part of the shuffle, Raytheon will be transferring some communications division workers from El Segundo to Fullerton, but there won’t be enough of them to offset the jobs being moved out of state, said spokesman Jim Knotts.

Raytheon had previously said it would eliminate about 600 positions at facilities it is closing this year in Irvine and Newport Beach, bringing to 1,750 the total Orange County job losses under the reorganization.