Rockwell Collins cut 124 Iowa jobs as part of announced reductions

Rockwell Collins cut more than 100 positions in the past 12 months as part of job reductions it first announced last October.

In October 2016, Cedar Rapids-based Rockwell said it would reduce its global workforce by between two percent to three percent in its 2017 fiscal year. The cuts would include layoffs and retirements, the company said at the time.

The avionics and aerospace technology company had about 20,000 employees worldwide last October. It now has about 30,000 after it acquired B/E Aerospace.

Josh Baynes, a Rockwell spokesman, said this week the company's workforce reductions came to 124 for the fiscal year, which ends Saturday. There were also a few hundred positions affected outside of Iowa, he said in an email.

The reductions are not related to United Technologies Corp.'s planned acquisition of Rockwell, he said. The acquisition is not expected to close until the second half of 2018, and the two companies are independent until then.

A state log of job cuts shows Rockwell reported 25 layoffs in Cedar Rapids in October 2016, 73 in December and another 19 between February 2017 and mid-September.

No workforce reductions currently are planned in Iowa for the next fiscal year, Baynes said, 'but in the normal course of business, we continually assess head count and make adjustments as necessary.”

Rockwell is the city's largest employer and has approximately 8,000 employees in Cedar Rapids. The company has about another 1,350 combined in Coralville, Decorah, Bellevue and Manchester.

Company executives have said there could be layoffs connected to the UTC acquisition, but a number has not been determined. Those cuts likely would be concentrated among staff members at the executive level or those needed to run company operations.

UTC and Rockwell estimate the acquisition will result in $500 million in cost savings within four years.

Another Cedar Rapids-area company that also cut staff recently, LeanCor Supply Chain Group, notified the state in August it would lay off 50 people effective Oct. 27.

LeanCor is based in Kentucky, but has operations in the Cedar Rapids Metropolitan Area. The company did not respond to emails or phone calls seeking comment.

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