Northrop to Cut 2,500 Southland Jobs in ’96

Northrop Grumman Corp. said Wednesday that it is eliminating 2,500 jobs on two military aircraft programs in Southern California this year, although 600 of those positions will be recouped by the end of 1997.

The cutbacks will affect virtually every occupation in aerospace, including engineers, assemblers, managers and administrators in plants stretching from the coast to the Mojave Desert. The Los Angeles-based firm currently employs 17,600 workers in California.

The reductions include 1,250 jobs on the Air Force B-2 Stealth bomber program in Pico Rivera and Palmdale, as engineering and production activities began to collapse ahead of the last aircraft delivery in 1998.

Northrop disclosed that it has already eliminated about 400 jobs this year on the B-2 program, which will continue to sustain cutbacks through the end of the decade.

An additional 850 jobs are being trimmed at the firm’s plants in Hawthorne and El Segundo, mainly on the Navy’s F-18 fighter program. The firm is curtailing production of the older F-18C/D model and completing engineering of the new F-18E/F.

As production of the new F-18 increases next year, Northrop will add 600 production jobs to the program, company spokesman Tony Cantafio said.

The cutbacks will also be partially offset by plans to add more than 100 jobs to the firm’s program in Hawthorne that builds the fuselage of the Boeing 747.

The overall job reductions represent a somewhat worse employment outlook than was previously expected. Northrop had already said it would eliminate about 900 jobs this year on the B-2; the eliminations disclosed Wednesday bring that figure to roughly 1,650. About 400 of the job losses are attributable to a management reorganization, in which the B-2 and the F-18 will be consolidated into a single division.

Northrop ranks among few defense contractors in Southern California whose employment has not yet leveled off. McDonnell Douglas, TRW, Rockwell International and Hughes Aircraft have all either stabilized or posted modest growth in recent months.

The firm is attempting to sell additional B-2 bombers, but regardless of whether the Pentagon buys more than the 21 currently on order, the firm’s employment on the program will continue to drop.

President Clinton last week agreed to buy one more B-2, which will be produced using a bare-bones test plane at a cost of $493 million. But even that addition will preserve only a modest, though undetermined, number of jobs after 1998, the company said.

Northrop now has about 8,400 jobs on the B-2 program; that will drop to about 7,200 by the end of the year. By 2000, those jobs will diminish to about 2,500 without substantial additional orders.

If the firm gets a significant new order, depending on the size and rate of production, it would employ perhaps 6,500 workers on the B-2, Cantafio said.

Meanwhile, the F-18 program is a dramatic contrast to the B-2. The Navy plans to buy 1,000 of the F-18E/F models, with production stretching over the next 19 years.

Northrop builds the F-18’s aft section, which includes its wings, engine housing and tail section, while McDonnell Douglas, the prime contractor, assembles the complete aircraft in St. Louis.