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My old man always tells me I was born 10 years too late. The 70's and 80's were very good in my family. My brothers who are much older than me are doing well because they had that head start when things were still good. I do remember my old man complaining about the cost of things going up over the years but nothing crazy. I was actually doing ok until the late 90's then everything seemed to fall apart. The COL left my salary in the dust. I never stood a chance. I will never forget my first tax bill after the Suozzi reassessment crap. My taxes went from 1400 a year to 3500 in the blink of an eye. My ass has hurt ever since.
Thats crazy, mine went up a grand this year, I feel your pain!
Read the article, people were not optimistic in the late 70s quite the opposite in fact. The aerospace industry was in bad shape then and had lost thousands of jobs thanks to Jimmah Carter's slashing of defense spending. However yes when Ronald Regan took office the industry got a reprieve although Fairchild Republic went under in the mid 80s when they lost the trainer contract which they needed to replace the A10. So I wouldn't say all was fine and dandy and contracts were 'raining down' either. Plenty of people lost their jobs.
How does that compare to TODAY? Then one can count on regaining employment with same level of pay and benefits when economies and policies turned around. You don't get that anymore.
Well it's obvious there are just a few thousand non-manufacturing defense jobs left on LI a shadow of what was. But my post was just correcting your assumption that contracts were raining down in the 80s and everything was fine. It's not that simple.
As for the rest of your post I agree. No argument here.
Uhmm, nowhere did I say everything was fine. Those were your words, not mine. And yes, contracts were in fact raining down - ie, capacity utilization of facilities was high enough such that Grumman kept increasing the size of its manufacturing plant up to the early 1990s. Otherwise they wouldn't have expanded their plant and would have shrank it sooner.
Uhmm, nowhere did I say everything was fine. Those were your words, not mine. And yes, contracts were in fact raining down - ie, capacity utilization of facilities was high enough such that Grumman kept increasing the size of its manufacturing plant up to the early 1990s. Otherwise they wouldn't have expanded their plant and would have shrank it sooner.
Raining down so much that Grumman's primary LI competitor Fairchild Republic went belly-up and closed up shop on LI in the mid-80's due to having no primary aircraft contract? Grumman had the F-14, E2C, and was wrapping up the A-6 in the 80's, there were some smaller contracts as well. Yes in the 80's Grumman was doing ok, but Bids to continue the F-14 (Tomcat 21), and the A6 (A6F and and the A-12) failed resulting in layoffs (yes in the late 80's) and eventually closing the plant in Calverton and half of Bethpage in the early 90's. I dont know where you are getting your info from, but Grumman was not expanding manufacturing facilities right up to the 90's when things were greatly winding down and the writing was on the wall. In fact I dont believe they expanded facilities much at all beyond the very early 80's.
All I am saying is things werent quite as rosy with the defense industry back then as you think they were.
Last edited by peconic117; 01-24-2013 at 05:29 PM..
Having worked in defense on Long Island in the 80's all I can say are contracts come and contracts go. The 80's were booming but the writing was on the wall that Long Island was going to lose the aerospace and defense business. One reason was the trouble with getting talented engineers to move to the Island as the COL made their asking salaries higher than elsewhere in the country (you can't eat beach). Another was the cost of shipping materials and finished product on and off. Truckers hate sitting in traffic and unless you paid them above their usual amount they'd turn work down for more lucrative loads elsewhere. Many more reasons that just kept chipping at aerospace and defense industry's reasons to do business on the Island.
Fairchild lost with the T-46 and was bought by Dornier and the Air Force hasn't gone through their stock of A-10s. Great jet.
But what about all these nostalgic tales about how LI was paradise in the 70s, 80s and earlier? Then it all supposedly came crashing down? These problems we have are nothing new, unfortunately that also shows that very little has changed over decades here.
More of a grinding down than a crash. Long Island always had one more trick up it's sleeve to soften a loss, but those may now be gone.
Having worked in defense on Long Island in the 80's all I can say are contracts come and contracts go. The 80's were booming but the writing was on the wall that Long Island was going to lose the aerospace and defense business. One reason was the trouble with getting talented engineers to move to the Island as the COL made their asking salaries higher than elsewhere in the country (you can't eat beach). Another was the cost of shipping materials and finished product on and off. Truckers hate sitting in traffic and unless you paid them above their usual amount they'd turn work down for more lucrative loads elsewhere. Many more reasons that just kept chipping at aerospace and defense industry's reasons to do business on the Island.
Fairchild lost with the T-46 and was bought by Dornier and the Air Force hasn't gone through their stock of A-10s. Great jet.
Yeah Big Props, to everyone who worked on the A-10, it was supposed to be retired after the original gulf war, yet it still trucks on. Amazing plane. Yep the T-46 was the final nail in the coffin.
Raining down so much that Grumman's primary LI competitor Fairchild Republic went belly-up and closed up shop on LI in the mid-80's due to having no primary aircraft contract? Grumman had the F-14, E2C, and was wrapping up the A-6 in the 80's, there were some smaller contracts as well. Yes in the 80's Grumman was doing ok, but Bids to continue the F-14 (Tomcat 21), and the A6 (A6F and and the A-12) failed resulting in layoffs (yes in the late 80's) and eventually closing the plant in Calverton and half of Bethpage in the early 90's. I dont know where you are getting your info from, but Grumman was not expanding manufacturing facilities right up to the 90's when things were greatly winding down and the writing was on the wall. In fact I dont believe they expanded facilities much at all beyond the very early 80's.
All I am saying is things werent quite as rosy with the defense industry back then as you think they were.
I never said they were expanding "right up to the 90s". Those are your words again, not mine.
Grumman employed more than 20K employees in 1986 and had the largest production square footage occupied. That's proof that it had been expanding. Yes, the defense industry went through up and down cycles during an almost 40 year run since the early 50s but the sentiment was that workers would get rehired once the cycle picked up again. Otherwise, Grumman would have shrank their facilities before 86.
In manufacturing, it's one thing to shrink your labor force, albeit if workers think it's merely temporary. It's another thing to shrink your facilities which is a clear sign that a sector is dying.
Closing plants 6 & 7 made sense since Dick Cheney essentially killed the program in 87(?). No new Toms no need to finish and test them. I think it was a mistake myself.
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