Posted: Mon, May 14, 2001, 2:21 PM ET (1821 GMT)
Lockheed Martin has laid off nearly 10 percent of the workforce in its commercial satellite division, Space News reported Monday. The company said it notified 125 workers on Friday that their jobs were being eliminated as part of the cutback; the employees will leave the company over the next two months. Most of the layoffs were at Lockheed Martin's facility in Newtown, Pennsylvania, with a handful at the Commercial Space Systems headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. The layoffs are part of an effort by the company to cut costs and remain competitive in the global communications satellite market given the recent decrease in demand for such spacecraft. The Space News article cited a Lockheed Martin official who said that current overcapacity in the satellite manufacturing market may be too much to sustain all five major companies in the field -- Lockeed Martin, Boeing, Loral, Alcatel, and Astrium -- and may eventually lead to consolidation among those firms.

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•  Space News/SPACE.com article