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Johnston Atoll firm
to trim 160 jobs

Most of those affected by the
Air Force's support provider
are from Hawaii

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Star-Bulletin Staff

Kalama Services, nearing the end of its five-year contract to provide support for the U.S. Air Force on Johnston Atoll, is laying off all 15 of its employees in Honolulu and 145 workers on the atoll.

The Air Force has awarded the contract, which expires Monday, to a unit of Lexington, Mass.-based Raytheon Co.

Raytheon Technical Services is rehiring 270 of Kalama's 415 employees on Johnston Atoll, a Kalama spokesman said yesterday. The rest face permanent layoffs, according to a notice filed with the state under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

Johnston Atoll is a site of the storage and destruction of chemical weapons. The support services contract provides water, power, transportation, food, housing and other services on Johnston, said Jim Gardner, program director for Kalama. His firm's Honolulu office had handled freight forwarding, procurement and recruiting. Gardner estimated that more than 60 percent of Kalama's work force on Johnston had come from Hawaii. The company had also purchased $5 million in goods from Hawaii businesses annually, he said.