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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Manufacturers Deal With Dilemma?

After a speaking engagement at Los Angeles Valley College, Ian Ziskin did not make the drive back to the Westside headquarters of his employer, aerospace and defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. Instead, Ziskin, chief human resources and administrative officer, headed to Woodland Hills and a satellite office at the company’s facility there where he could catch up with e-mails and hold meetings by phone. Working outside the regular office, flexible work hours and telecommuting are among the steps taken by Northrop to create an environment that is attractive to its workers so they want to stay. Like other large aerospace companies in Southern California, Northrop faces the challenge of finding and retaining qualified workers especially in the face of the potential retirement of nearly half its employee base in the next five years. “We need to brand ourselves as a place with great technical leadership and great technical work to have a competitive advantage,” Ziskin told a group of about 60 people at a conference on creating a skilled advanced manufacturing workforce. Northrop employs 120,000 workers around the world, including 30,000 in California with a payroll of $2.5 billion. The Woodland Hills plant develops and manufactures navigation systems for the company’s electronic systems sector. The Palmdale plant makes the Global Hawk and B2 Spirit stealth bomber. Despite staggering losses in employees starting in 1990, aerospace remains among the top 10 employers in Los Angeles County, according to a study by the county’s economic development corporation. Aerospace jobs totaled 38,400 jobs in 2006, a drop of 14 percent from the 52,400 jobs in 2000, according to the study. The large aerospace manufacturers compete with each other for multi-million dollar contracts but on some matters they work together including those related to their workforce. The industry is lobbying for legislation allowing a phased-in retirement so that employees can scale back their hours and responsibilities and still draw a pension, Ziskin said. There has also been a collective effort to invest in school, students and teachers to boost interest in science, technology, engineering and math curriculums especially in the lower grades. “We are all going to draw from the same pool as (the students) graduate,” Ziskin said. With the world marking the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik and the start of the Space Race between the U.S. and Russia, it becomes all that more obvious that a similar defining event is missing to capture the imagination of students to enter the math and science fields. But that doesn’t mean opportunities do not exist at Northrop and other aerospace companies as a large percentage of workers hit retirement age. According to the Aerospace Commission, as much as 27 percent of aerospace workers are eligible to retire by 2008. The Aerospace Industries Association found that 52 percent of aerospace employees fell between the ages of 45 and 64 in 2005, the most recent year for which numbers are available. At Northrop, the average retirement age is 62 years and 30 percent of the workforce retires before age 60. The numbers of younger workers coming up in the ranks, however, may not be enough to replace the retirees. In 2005, only 15 percent of the aerospace workforce was made up of 25- to 34-year-olds, a 2 percent increase from 2004 but significantly lower from the mid-1990s when that number was between 20 and 27 percent, according to the AIA. Where those replacement workers come from was discussed by a panel at the conference. Creating a workforce with the skills for advanced manufacturing work boiled down to training workers internally, creating interest in math and science in elementary school students and teaching students “soft” skills leadership, teamwork, problem solving as well as hard, technical skills. “The right attitude and ethics goes hand in hand to form a successful team,” said Lidia Gorko, chairman and CEO of Gorko Industries, a North Hills manufacturer for the aerospace industry. At Esterline Mason, a Sylmar manufacturer, the management recently took a close look at the career paths that its 350 employees can follow and clearly delineated what skills and training they would need, said human resources Director Ruben Galvan, Jr. Having those details available becomes a recruiting tool for new employees and a performance and coaching feedback tool for those already working, Galvan said. “Creating employee retention creates success for our company,” Galvan said.

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