Report BacksSwitch To Civilian Industry

A city agency report released Thursday has recommended that Cambridge military contractors develop plans to convert to civilian industry.

Prepared by the Cambridge Commission on Nuclear Disarmament and Peace Education, known as the Peace Commission, the report recommends long-range planning for economic conversion as part of the movement for disarmament so that jobs in the research and development sectors will not be sacrificed.

"We hope to identify ways in which a firm like Bolt, Beranek, and Newmann [a local research firm] can use its technology for turbines in civilian boats rather than building Trident missiles," Jeb Brugman, the commission's executive director, said at a press conference Thursday.

This report, which may influence the direction of the national peace movement, represents the first such treatment of economic conversion by a municipality, commission members said

The report is one of a series of peace initiatives by the city. In 1981, the City Council rejected the national civil defense guide for nuclear war.

Also in 1981, Cantabrigians voted over-whelmingly in favor of a referendum calling for a nuclear freeze. The Peace commission, another national first, was established in 1982 after a city wide vote.

This kind of activism has led to an interesting contradiction, Brugman said, "Cambridge is the national center for peace advocacy, but we're also a national center of military contracting for the Pentagon," he said

In 1982, 2334 million Department of Defense (DOD) dollars passed through Cambridge mostly in the form of contracts for military-related research, the report stated This total represents between 10 and 15 percent of the city's gross economic product

The concept of economic conversion became an issue during last fall's heated debate over a referendum which would have banned the production or research of nuclear weapons or their components.

The Nuclear Free Cambridge referendum failed by a 20 percent margin, after a contentious campaign in which more than half of the $540.000 raised by the referendum's opponents came from corporate interests outside the state

Many voted against the referendum because they feared losing their jobs, proponents said.

"Those slick, well-financed campaigns were very effective last November--they scared people," said Alice Wolf, a city councilor.

"Here we have the opportunity not to be an elite group of people who don't look at the problems of working people, but to show that economic conversion may work," she told the press conference.

The report, entitled "Jobs For Our Future," is the first concrete work from the one-and-a-half year-old commission whose mandate directs it to study, advocate and assist in the conversion of military dependent industries.

Representatives of some local firms have responded to the report by saying that they are already in the process of converting some of their operations to civilian projects.

Draper Labs, which received about $125 million in DOD contracts in 1982, "is diversifying now--we're not 100 percent military," said company spokesperson Gail Caruso.

She added that about 15 percent of Draper's contracts are non-military, many in robotics and automation innovations.

But proponents of conversion state that partial diversification is not enough to avoid crippling economic hardships if Washington priorities change.