Victims of a Good, Glamorous Cause

IN the towns and cities surrounding the nation's great aero space plants, the future long gleamed as brightly as a jet liner in a sunny sky. Jobs were plentiful, wages and aspirations ran high and local businessmen thrived. A sense of well-being enveloped the skilled aerospace workers, especially the scientists and engineers who saw themselves at the head of the country's drive toward technological preeminence. They were the crew-cut exemplars of the puritan ethic, doing useful work for a good, glamorous cause.

Today, unemployed aerospace workers are finding their ex pensive talents unsalable. Some are moving to other cities and even other countries, including England, Israel and South Africa, hoping vaguely that something will turn up.

Many of them are waiting out the slump, baffled and frus trated, while others try their hands at lesser skills and ad just their lives to meaner incomes.

As business dries up. some of the once-prosperous aerospace towns are fading.

At Sunnyvale, Calif., the mood inside the executive offices of the local Lock heed plant is one of spacious melancholy, like the first-class ballroom on the Ti tanic after most of the passengers had jumped ship. At nearby Mountain View, apartment owners are offering $50 to tenants who find friends to fill the va cancies. As jobless blue-collar workers and engineers have used up their un employment benefits, the rolls of food-stamp recipients in San Jose, Calif., have grown from 9,000 to 37,000 in the past year. Unemployment in the Se attle area is now 13.1%. Hundreds of workers dismissed by United Aircraft have left Hartford, Conn., in search of new jobs.

A sampling of the mood among the dazed victims in four aerospace centers: .

In white block letters on a funeral black background, a sign in the employment office of Lockheed's Marietta, Ga., plant carries a curt message: NO JOBS AVAILABLE, SALARY OR HOURLY. In the past 18 months, 12,000 Lockheed workers have been dismissed. Typical of them, Larry Cline, an $8,500-a-year assembler, was given only two days' notice that he was through. That was six months ago. For most of the time since then, he has measured out his days in a gray, boring round of job-hunting, shopping and cooking. His wife Linda has taken work as a bookkeeper.

Cline broods about the treatment he has received. When he sought help in getting another job through Lockheed's relocation office, company officials advised him that perhaps his skills could be useful in Viet Nam.

Cline's reaction: "I've already had a year in Viet Nam, and I sure wouldn't want to go back there." Other prospective employers would not hire him because, he believes, they feared that he would rush right back to Lockheed as soon as it got a new contract. Cline has been drawing a $49 weekly unemployment check--and feels embarrassed. "It's hard," he explains, "to see the difference between compensation and welfare." At last his lonely search seems to be over. He recently landed a $7,100-a-year office job with the National Guard, which required, as a condition of employment, that he become a member and train one weekend a month. "I know one thing," says Cline. "I'll never again work for Lockheed--or anything that lives on Government contracts." heed--or anything that lives on Government contracts." In Wichita, Kans., where aerospace plants have grown amid the wheatfields, the jobless rate has risen to 10.6%. Little bitterness is evident, but many people are troubled by the seeming unreality of the situation. Says Carl Courter, an International Association of Machinists representative: "When a Senator talks about retraining the work force, I want to ask him, 'Senator, what for?' We already have lots of skills, just no work."

Richard Brown, 33, was an aeronautical engineer for ten years at a nearby Boeing aircraft plant--before he was laid off. Now he spends his days putting silk-screen designs on T shirts, which he sells. For a pizza-parlor promotion, he prints a picture of a little pizza baker on the shirt; for a hippie head shop he paints a marijuana cigarette design. Brown has given up hope of soon finding another job in his own field; he has not even written a resume. To conserve money, he and his wife spend nothing on entertainment, use powdered milk exclusively and buy clothes only when absolutely necessary. Still, Brown believes the experience is valuable for his three children. "They're going to remember the time they couldn't afford cookies."

In Fort Worth, a newspaper recently published a story about the effects of the aerospace decline on the economy of Cocoa Beach, Fla. It took note of that city's many empty stores, deserted motels and HOUSE FOR SALE signs. The story could hardly have assuaged Fort Worth residents. They have faced the same dreary landscape since the severe cutbacks at General Dynamics and Bell Helicopter. Says Ray Hayes, an employment-agency executive: "The outlook for aerospace workers here has never been grimmer. I have a man with four degrees who never been grimmer. I have a man with four degrees who is peddling correspondence courses."

Businessmen now rue the city's excessive dependence on the mercurial aerospace industry, and they vow that they will seek a broader and more stable economic base. "The majority of the people feel the Government has let us down," says George Barnes, president of the United Auto Workers local. The city's children have also been touched. "There is a pervasive trace of cynicism and depression among most of the kids now," observes Margie Cronin, a local schoolteacher. Some of them are canceling plans to go to college after having seen their university-trained fathers summarily dismissed. Their attitude: it is easier, and a lot more fun, to be an out-of-work rock musician than an unemployed engineer.

When Grumman Corp. moved to Long Island's Nassau County, Hicksville and Bethpage sprouted out of the potato fields and became bustling communities. But 10,000 people have been laid off by Grumman in recent years. The troubled Republic Aviation plant in the area is operating at less than half of its capacity. Both towns now reflect the austere mood of a populace under siege. As worried residents pinch off their spending, the once-hefty profits of local businessmen have shriveled. Edward A. Siegmann, owner of The Hedges restaurant in Hicksville, says, "We used to have up to 80 people for lunch. Now we're lucky to get 20." Moviehouses that have lowered their admission from $2.50 to $1 for second-and third-run films are now getting a rush. Says Steve Kerekes, public relations officer at Grumman: "A little more than a year ago there were lots of empty seats in those movies, but now the lines are two blocks long."

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