FORT WORTH (1080 KRLD) - With the COVID-19 pandemic grinding the economy to a halt and decimating companies of all industries, at least one company still has the "help wanted" sign out.
"During this time of crisis when people are worried about jobs, we're in a position where we have plenty of positions available," says Ken Ross, spokesman for Lockheed Martin. "Last week, we announced that we have 5,000 positions open across the corporation, and roughly 700 of those are here in the DFW area."
Most of the positions require an advanced skill set, but not all of them.
"Roughly 70% of those will be in engineering or related fields," says Ross, "and others are support functions, whether that's finance, human resources, supply chain -- those kinds of positions."
Ross says Lockheed Martin is able to not only hire but also retain its employees.
"We are in a business where, even in this time of pandemic, the U.S. government has declared that the defense industrial base, which we are part of, is an essential workforce," Ross says. "So we still have a responsibility to provide the capabilities and services that we do for our men and women in uniform."
However, not everyone is thrilled that Lockheed Martin continues to be up and running.
A petition on change.org is demanding that the company shut down amid the pandemic and pay its employees in the meantime. (LINK: https://www.change.org/p/lockheed-martin-lockheed-martin-workers-should-...)
The company is aware of the petition.
"We've taken a lot of proactive actions to make sure we have a safe working environment for our employees in terms of how we clean (and) how we provide guidance to employees to make sure that they're following safe steps according to the CDC," says Ross.
The company is also actively encouraging social distancing.
"We're encouraging employees who have the ability to complete their jobs from home to work remotely," Ross says. "And as a result of that, we have almost two-thirds of our workforce who are working remotely from home, which also creates an opportunity to create more social distancing at work, because there's less people there."