Lockheed Martin Corporation, an American security company that specializes in defense and technology contracts, announced that it will lay off approximately 1,200 workers of its 16,000 domestic workers by the end of 2011 from Lockheed Martin Space Systems. Spokespersons for the company cited economic difficulties as reasons for the planned action.

Executive Vice President of Lockheed’s space-systems unit, Joanne Maguire stated,

“In today’s economic environment, we have two choices: make painful decisions now or pay a greater price down the road…This is a difficult but necessary action to improve efficiencies and make our business more competitive going forward”.

Likewise, Lockheed spokesperson Steve Tatum also said the lay offs are due to “the budgetary environment that is affecting our customers.”

Indeed, the federal government of the United States, a customer of Lockheed, is seeing slightly reduced budgets for military purposes.

Major Lockheed projects are also being closed down mainly in the space-systems division, however products already ordered will still be built.

According to Lockheed, demands for satellites, spacecraft and missile defense systems have declined which has had a profound impact on the decision-making.

Lockheed announced that the layoffs will most likely be seen in California, Pennsylvania and Colorado across the space-systems division. Middle management will be cut by 25%. The company is now offering “voluntary” layoffs in order to reduce the amount of “involuntary” layoffs as another method of achieving the projected number of layoffs.

(Cover Photo: Photo attributed to Coolcaesar – licensed under the CCL Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 & GFDL, version 1.2)