IBEW Jobs in Portsmouth To Go Down With Shipyard?
May 20, 2005
 On May 13, the long-dreaded news hit the two-state community that the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard was tagged for elimination by the Defense Department.
The loss of the oldest Navy base in America would be a blow to the identity of the coastal town in southern New Hampshire and its neighboring community across the river in Maine. But the biggest loss of all would be the 4,803 high-paying jobs, producing more than $318 million in payroll for the area. And even if the yard’s key location on nearly 300 acres would be highly desirable property to private developers, those high-quality jobs would likely never be replaced.
 The Defense Department’s recommendation, part of a nationwide plan to save more than $50 billion over the next 20 years, is not the last word in the battle. Now the list of 62 targeted bases goes to the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC), which will review the Pentagon’s picks and send its own list to the White House by early September.
Ironically, performance of the base is not considered in the criteria the military uses to make decisions on what to close. If so, Portsmouth would not be on the list, said Portsmouth Metal Trades Council President Paul O’Connor.
"We are leaps and bounds ahead of everybody else in performance," said O’Connor, who is one of 200 members of Portsmouth Local 2071. "We are No. 1. There is no dispute about that. We get the boats out cheaper, three months faster. If that isn’t military value, what is?"
The two states have joined together to keep Portsmouth, the only one of the nation’s four nuclear shipyards targeted for shutdown, off the BRAC list. Since 1988, only 15 percent of the Defense Department’s picks have been overturned in the highly political process fraught with congressional infighting that pits state against state and region against region.
And legislation introduced in the Senate this week would postpone any decisions on base closures until the Pentagon finishes a quadrennial review next year and until "substantially all" forces return from Iraq. Introduced by Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the bill is co-sponsored by Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.
"What they did was wrong and we’re not going to stand for it," O’Connor said at a May 17 rally in Maine before an estimated crowd of 2,000 and attended by the governors of New Hampshire and Maine as well as U.S. senators and members of Congress. "We’re not down. We’re going to stay up and we’re going to whack them back."
Portsmouth Metal Trades spokesman Greg Kenefick said the base where workers maintain and repair nuclear submarines is efficient, and consistently performs work below cost and on schedule. Besides, the community has time before the final decision is made. "I don’t think this first list is the final list," Kenefick said. "Some of it is trial balloons. And this community is a very vocal bunch."
BRAC Chairman Anthony Principi made clear his group’s mission at its first public hearing on May 16. "We are not a rubber stamp for the Defense Department," he said. "We are an independent check on the Defense Department and at the end of the day we will make our recommendations to the president."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned the commission not to make changes, as they could interfere with its overall consolidation plan. O’Connor blasted Rumsfeld for threatening the commission and withholding from public view key pieces of his report to BRAC. "We have some really strong arguments," he said. "They have not released their data, which minimizes the time we have to collect our own data. They don’t make it easy for us."
The shutdown is part of long term Navy plans that have already reduced the size of the American fleet from 600 to 300, said IBEW Government Employees Director William "Chico" McGill. And when the fleet shrinks, so does the number of qualified craftsmen.
"Years of critical craft experience will be lost as workers leave the shipbuilding and repair industry," McGill said.
Portsmouth residents have been gearing for the possibility of a BRAC showdown. Three weeks ago the New Hampshire Employment Labor Market Information Bureau came out with a report that estimated shipyard workers earn average salaries of $65,000. While the analysis concluded the region would rebound if the base does close, it would take years to recover, and the higher-paying jobs would probably never return.
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