Manufacturing biz looks to clean up its image

At a business roundtable Monday on the problems of creating manufacturing jobs on Long Island, one of the prime problems was summed up succinctly by John Lombardo, Suffolk County Community College's director of training.

"The biggest challenge is we have negative branding for manufacturing," said Lombardo, at the roundtable at Telephonics Corp. in Huntington. "It's considered a dirty job. But it's not the same as it was 30 years ago."

No, not at all, said Anne Shybunko-Moore, president of Hauppauge-based defense company GSE Dynamics Inc. "It's not your jeans and T-shirt" business anymore, Shybunko-Moore said. "You have to understand math now, trigonometry." Young people, the group felt, tend to avoid manufacturing jobs, considering them messy and short-lived.

Kirsten Gillibrand, New York's Democratic junior senator who is seeking her first full term this November, called the session as part of a statewide effort to grow jobs. Long Island's loss of manufacturing is legendary, led by the sale in 1994 of Grumman Corp. to Northrop Corp., and the closing in 1987 of Farmingdale-based Fairchild-Republic Co. The meeting Monday was the latest swing at the problem that has plagued the Island for decades.

What emerged from the session was a plan to hold a Long Island manufacturing summit in the spring, at which the issues of costs, affordable housing for workers and job creation will all be taken up.

Joe Battaglia, president of Telephonics, a defense-electronics manufacturer, said the company is a "dinosaur" on the Island now. "This is a difficult place to do business," Battaglia said. Gillibrand spoke of several measures in the Senate she is backing for job creation. She also said she is seeking a seat on the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee "so I can be a voice" for the state's defense industry.

Gillibrand promised that the spring symposium will take place. Those at the meeting said they will hold her to that.