Jet engine maker Pratt & Whitney said it plans to eliminate 1,000 jobs in Connecticut by 2011, transferring engine repair work to the Southeastern state of Georgia and Asia in a cost-cutting initiative.

This subsidiary of United Technologies Corp. (UTX) will close down its Cheshire, Connecticut, plant by early 2011. From the second quarter of 2010, it will begin shifting some operations from the East Hartford facility to Columbus, Georgia, Singapore and Japan. Pratt & Whitney, which is suffering due to sagging demand from airlines, employs 35,000 workers worldwide, with 11,000 in Connecticut.

The company rejected an offer that the Machinists union valued at more than $80 million in wage and other concessions and a state plan proposing $100 million in economic assistance over five years. Pratt & Whitney has vastly scaled back operations in the state since the 1960s, when more than 20,000 workers were employed.

Pratt

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Three Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME) successfully powered the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on Mission STS-128 to deliver extra supplies and equipment to support a six-person crew onboard the International Space Station. The SSME is the world's only fully reusable high performance rocket engine rated for human space flight. Discovery was launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on 30th August. Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is a unit of United Technologies Corp. (UTX).

Discovery's main payload is the Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module, which is carrying extra supplies and equipment to help establish a six-astronaut crew capacity on the space station. The payload includes science and storage racks, a treadmill and a crew quarter.

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne Inc., a part of Pratt & Whitney, is a preferred provider of high-value propulsion, power, energy and innovative system solutions used in a wide variety of government

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