Lockheed Martin is asking 1,000 mid-level employees in its aerospace arm to consider leaving their jobs on their own. Through this voluntary layoff program, the company hopes to reduce about 0.8 percent of its entire workforce.
The company, headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, has a global presence and its divisions dip into the sectors of aerospace, defense, security and advanced technology. This voluntary layoff program only targets its aerospace divisions at its U.S. locations.
"The action is necessary to position Lockheed Martin Aeronautics to be competitive in the future marketplace, secure future business opportunities, and keep an infrastructure appropriately aligned with customer demands," the company says.
The locations to which the company is extending the voluntary layoff program include Fort Worth in Texas, Marietta in Georgia, Meridian in Mississippi, Clarksburg in West Virginia, Patuxent River in Maryland, and Palmdale and Edwards Air Force Base in California.
The voluntary layoff program is believed to have been extended to 9,000 eligible employees in the supply chain, human resources, finance, engineering and communications divisions of the locations listed above.
Lockheed Martin didn't reveal any plans to incentivize the voluntary departure of the 1,000 employees it'd like to see leave, but the company is expected to buy out the volunteer. Counting the workforce of its subsidiary Sikorsky Aircraft, the company employs about 126,000 employees worldwide, according to Lockheed Martin.
While the company continues to win prized contracts from the U.S. government, bids from Lockheed Martin and partner Boeing to build the U.S. Air Force's next-generation bomber, the B-21, were turned down last November. The contract, valued somewhere between $55 billion and $80 billion, was awarded to the builders of the B-2 Spirit, Northrop Grumman.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin challenged the awarding of the contract to Northrop Grumman, but the pair recently withdrew their challenge.
Lockheed Martin's current slimming effort to its aerospace division, its most profitable arm, may have more to do with the construction of F-35 warfighters than to do with building B-21 bombers. The company is expected to produce eight more F-35s this year in addition to the 45 it put out last year.
For 2017, the U.S. government is expected to order 63 F-35s. However, that's less than the 68 jets Lockheed Martin originally expected to build next year.
