Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 16, 1993 TAG: 9307160242
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS and STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The long-anticipated job cuts, effective Sept. 17, will trim the plant's work force by 17 percent. Affected are 40 salaried workers and 80 union members paid by the hour.
Twelve of the jobs cut will involve early retirement or voluntary resignation of seven salaried and five hourly workers, the company said.
The ITT plant on Plantation Road near Hollins employs 695 people. It makes night-vision goggles and other equipment for military and commercial use. The U.S. Army has been its primary customer.
The job cuts are necessary because of "continually declining defense procurement," said Neil A. Gallagher, the division president and general manager. He called the action "unfortunate and unavoidable."
"After many months of concerted effort . . . to eliminate waste and reduce costs, we still are left with no alternative [other] than to reduce the current head count," Gallagher said.
He declined to give the pay rate of the jobs being cut and said that information is confidential.
Workers leaving the plant after Thursday's day shift seemed upbeat, though none would give his or her name after commenting. Workers were told of the cuts in a company meeting Thursday.
The layoffs will affect workers in two ways, costing some of their jobs outright and "bumping" others to lower-level jobs, they said.
One woman employed by the company 19 years said workers would find out Monday what the job changes will be.
"People have been here for years and years and are getting bumped down to a different department - a lower department," said one 31-year-old man, who said he worked on a cleanup crew.
"I'm at the bottom. . . . I'm going to be looking for a job," he said. The man said he'd worked six years for ITT and had been demoted during each of four previous layoffs.
Departments in the plant that are affected by the new cuts include manufacturing, engineering, business development and finance.
The job cuts will reduce employment at the plant to 575. Since 1990, roughly 400 jobs have been cut. The latest layoffs were in March, involving 30 salaried workers.
ITT spokeswoman Laurel Holder said the company hopes the reduction will be all the company needs through the next two years, based on its current defense contracts.
The company has won the major portion of the military's contracts for night-vision devices over the past eight years but the value of those contracts has steadily declined, Holder said.
"It's not an easy decision [to cut jobs]; it's always a serious issue when you talk about eliminating personnel," she said.
Managers have spent long hours in recent weeks looking at alternatives to job cuts, Holder said. Successful efforts were made to cut costs, including improvement of manufacturing processes, negotiation of lower prices with suppliers and savings on energy costs, she said.
But those savings were not enough as the company faces a 20 percent decline in its sales between 1992 and 1994, Holder said. Costs had to be reduced further and the only thing left to cut was employment, she said.
The plant has sought commercial business to make up for declining defense purchases. ITT has marketed night-vision equipment for such uses as law enforcement, boating and commercial fishing.
The plant's commercial operation, however, is in its infancy, Gallagher said. "We cannot at this point predict our level of success in such totally different markets," he said.
ITT said the plant's human resources department would provide counseling and assistance in finding new jobs for displaced workers.
The local announcement of job cuts came a day after New York-based ITT said it has begun a major study aimed at improving the efficiency and productivity of the company's support staff.
The study, which began on June 1, is expected to be completed by Sept. 30 and covers the staff functions of ITT's world headquarters in New York and those of its eight major businesses.
Included in the study are roughly 4,000 of ITT's 106,000 workers. They are involved in such support areas as legal, human resources, and corporate relations.
The company said it was impossible at this point to predict how many jobs would be affected by the study but actions implemented as a result of the findings should save the company about $100 million a year.
The Electro-Optical Products Division is a unit of ITT Defense and Electronics based in Arlington.
by CNB