Defense Industry Labor Relations

Defense Contractor Seeks Wage Cuts: Raytheon Co. has asked its largest union to take a 15% wage cut as part of a cost-cutting plan triggered by lower defense spending, a union official said. "I would never accept it," said Jim Kilroy of Local 1505 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which covers 5,000 Raytheon workers in Massachusetts. "It's very unfair."

Lockheed Martin Corp., the world's largest defense contractor, faces potential strikes this weekend at two plants after unions rejected separate contracts. The plants are in Palmdale, where Stealth fighter maintenance work is performed, and in Marietta, Ga., where the C-130J cargo plane is produced. The Marietta plant's 4,300-member Machinists Union notified the company that a strike could come as early as Sunday, a union spokesman said.

Women held fewer than 6% of directorships and upper management jobs at the nation's top 20 defense contractors in 1990 and minorities fewer than 2% of the posts, only a slight improvement for both groups over 10 years ago, according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity released Thursday. In singling out the defense industry for scrutiny, the nonprofit organization cited a 1965 executive order by then-President Lyndon B.

Sunnyvale Lockheed Martin Workers Won't Strike: However, unionized machinists at Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Palmdale and Marietta, Ga., plants voted overwhelmingly to reject a proposed three-year contract with the company and walk out. Members of International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union at the Sunnyvale, Calif., plant failed to muster enough votes to authorize a strike. A strike won't start immediately, because the union is required to give Lockheed Martin five days' notice.

Two women in their 60s who grow cotton in Madras, India, apparently pose the newest security threat to the B-2 Stealth bomber program: Their brother was thrown off the B-2 program after a security review deemed the women a risk. Thasamuthu Ramakrishnan, a U.S. citizen for nine years, had worked on the B-2 project since 1991 as a software engineer under an Air Force special-access clearance and had won plaudits from his supervisors.

The Constitution he suborned, The rule of law he lately scorned, The very safeguards he decried, Now save is sanctimonious hide. REDERIC E. PAMP Santa Ynez

Lockheed Martin, Machinists Reach Tentative Pact: Details of the proposed labor contract between Lockheed Martin Corp. and Machinists Union leaders won't be made public until they are released to the 12,500 rank-and-file members at three plants in the next two days. The Lockheed Martin plants are in Marietta, Ga.; Palmdale; and Sunnyvale, Calif. Union members at all sites will vote on the three-year pact Wednesday, the union said.

Over lunch recently, members of the Pico Rivera City Council came down "hard and heavy" on their congressman, Rep. Esteban E. Torres. They pressed him to support full funding of the expensive new Air Force plane being built in their Los Angeles County community--the B-2 Stealth bomber.

President Clinton's new plan for saving some of the 11,000 jobs that otherwise would be lost with the closing of McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento may seem attractive politically but it is unlikely to produce the results he has promised, defense analysts said Thursday.

Defense Contractor Seeks Wage Cuts: Raytheon Co. has asked its largest union to take a 15% wage cut as part of a cost-cutting plan triggered by lower defense spending, a union official said. "I would never accept it," said Jim Kilroy of Local 1505 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which covers 5,000 Raytheon workers in Massachusetts. "It's very unfair."

President Clinton's new plan for saving some of the 11,000 jobs that otherwise would be lost with the closing of McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento may seem attractive politically but it is unlikely to produce the results he has promised, defense analysts said Thursday.

Two women in their 60s who grow cotton in Madras, India, apparently pose the newest security threat to the B-2 Stealth bomber program: Their brother was thrown off the B-2 program after a security review deemed the women a risk. Thasamuthu Ramakrishnan, a U.S. citizen for nine years, had worked on the B-2 project since 1991 as a software engineer under an Air Force special-access clearance and had won plaudits from his supervisors.

Herb Rosenberg fairly gushes grievance. Bad enough he's being laid off after 28 years with Hughes Aircraft. Bad enough that other Southland defense contractors are doing so much contracting--in the sense of shrinkage--that he'll have to find another line of work. What has him practically apoplectic is that the company offered a substantial severance package-- "They were being generous," he sputters--and Herb can't have it.

Women held fewer than 6% of directorships and upper management jobs at the nation's top 20 defense contractors in 1990 and minorities fewer than 2% of the posts, only a slight improvement for both groups over 10 years ago, according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity released Thursday. In singling out the defense industry for scrutiny, the nonprofit organization cited a 1965 executive order by then-President Lyndon B.