Space Systems/Loral to Cut 90 Jobs

Space Systems/Loral is a name that you may not know much about, unless you are really into lasers or government communications systems. For those of you who are not too familiar with the company here is a look at how they have chosen to describe themselves, “Welcome to the Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) Web site. SS/L is a premier designer, manufacturer, and integrator of reliable communications satellites and satellite systems for an international roster of commercial and government customers. Customers use our systems to deliver services such as broadcast and cable programming, broadband digital communications, direct-to-home TV, defense communications, environmental and meteorological monitoring, air traffic control, digital audio radio and mobile satellite services.”

The company is getting ready to cut back on about 90 jobs from its facility. All of the jobs to be ut are coming from the jobs in Palo Alto. This is more then enough to qualify as a mass layoff action under the current guidelines set by the federal government. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.”

Interestingly enough the company is not putting out a release about the job cuts that are happening to their staff. Instead the company has chosen to highlight the investigation that the company is working on about a recently launched satellite, “Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) and Sea Launch AG today announced the formation of a three-person Independent Oversight Board to oversee the ongoing investigation into the root cause of an anomaly on a recently launched satellite.  The Independent Oversight Board will be made up of impartial industry experts, nominated by the two companies.  The Independent Oversight Board will guide the joint SS/L-Sea Launch investigation team, which has been working together for several weeks to collect and analyze data with the objective of determining the root cause of damage to one solar array on an SS/L 1300 satellite that was launched on May 31, 2012 on a Sea Launch Zenit-3SL vehicle.”

As you can imagine this is not the only company in the aerospace industry that is experiencing cuts that are impacting its staffing. For those of you who missed out on our earlier coverage here is a look at some of our cuts to B/E Aerospace, “Well, apparently the company is hoping to keep doing all of that without a number of their workers.  The company sent a WARN notice to the state of Florida notifying them that they are going to be getting rid of 55 workers in the near future. A WARN notice is sent to the state before a mass layoff action is taken by the company.”