700 to Lose Jobs at General Dynamics Plant

General Dynamics’ Convair Division will lay off about 700 employees--mostly white collar workers--by the end of the year in an attempt to “rebalance the work force” to match the defense contractor’s upcoming contracts.

Management support personnel, engineers and supervisors will be among those hardest hit by the layoffs, which are to take effect gradually over the next seven months, General Dynamics spokesman Jack Isabel said Monday. The layoffs are not connected to the loss of a particular contract, he said.

“We are top heavy on the management support side,” Isabel said. Employees being laid off will be given outplacement assistance, he said.

2nd Biggest Layoff

The layoffs are the most for General Dynamics since its Space Systems division disclosed last June that it was cutting up to 1,200 jobs in the wake of National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s cancellation of the Space Shuttle Centaur program. General Dynamics was the prime contractor for the NASA’s $647-million Centaur booster rocket program.

Of General Dynamics’ 16,500 employees in San Diego, nearly 9,000 work at Convair Division.

Current Convair contracts include the Tomahawk Cruise missile for the Navy and Air Force, and DC-10 commercial airliner fuselages for McDonnell Douglas Corp. Convair will soon begin production of fuselages for McDonnell Douglas’s MD-11 airliner.