Newport News Shipbuilding aims to hire thousands

NEWPORT NEWS

Even as the Navy contemplates possible cuts to ship orders, Newport News Shipbuilding is moving full-speed ahead with plans to hire thousands of workers.

“We’re expecting to hire somewhere around 10,000 people over the next five years, but it may be as high as 15,000,” said Bill Bell, vice president of human resources and administration for the unit of Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc., also headquartered in Newport News.

In 2011, Bell estimates, the company will hire about 2,000 people, including 1,500 trade or craft workers and 500 salaried employees. A little more than half of the hiring this year has been done.

“Not only do we have welders and fitters and machinists, designers and engineers,” Bell said. “We have chemists; we have lab techs; we have doctors; we have people who do cooking, you know? We’re like a small city.”

At the end of June, the shipyard employed a few more than 20,000, up from the estimated 19,000 that Northrop Grumman Corp., the yard’s previous owner, had reported in recent years.

Of the current total, about 20 percent, or 4,000, are eligible for retirement, Bell said.

The hiring under way now isn’t driven so much by growth at the shipyard, which has been small, but by the number of people leaving for one reason or another.

“I would tell you that probably 80 percent of the hiring we’re doing right now – at least 80 percent – is for attrition,” Bell said.

Some workers are retiring, while others are pursuing new careers, he said.

Newport News Shipbuilding, which turned 125 years old in January, is the only shipyard in the nation that makes aircraft carriers and one of only two that build submarines.

It’s in the process of building the Gerald R. Ford, the first of a new class of aircraft carriers, and preparing to build the second carrier in the class, the John F. Kennedy.

The estimated costs of the two ships are $11.5 billion and $10.3 billion, respectively, according to a July 11 Congressional Research Service study by Ronald O’Rourke.

The shipyard, along with General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Conn., also shares in the building of Virginia-class submarines.

In late April, the Navy freed up funding to allow the building of a second sub this fiscal year, marking the transition to building two of the subs a year, a production schedule set to continue for the next five fiscal years

Yet within the last year or so – more so within the past month – reports have circulated in Washington about potential defense cost-cutting measures that could affect both carriers and submarines.

Navy officials are weighing pushing back the scheduled procurement of the Kennedy by two years – to 2015, according to a Defense News report earlier this month.

If the Kennedy delay were to play out, it could “substantially reduce” the funding needed for the carrier in fiscal years 2013 and 2014 but add to the total procurement cost “potentially by hundreds of millions of dollars,” according to O’Rourke’s study.

The carrier delay, he wrote, also could add to the procurement costs of the Virginia-class submarines being built at Newport News over the next few years, as well as “have implications for the aircraft carrier industrial base and future aircraft carrier force levels.”

Some groups, too, have begun to call for a slowdown in the Virginia-class submarine program, according to a July 1 report by O’Rourke for Congressional Research Service.

Three reports since June 2010 – including one by the Cato Institute and another by the Center for American Progress – have pushed for rolling back sub production to one a year.

Huntington Ingalls officials declined to comment on any potential impacts to its workforce from the various funding scenarios, responding with a previously released statement.

“While we don’t comment on Navy budget deliberations and associated speculation, we have and will continue to support the program of record that has aircraft carriers being procured every five years as we believe this is the most cost efficient way to build these testaments of national purpose,” the email read.

“We also support the Secretary of the Navy’s and (Chief of Naval Operations’) commitment to a stable shipbuilding plan.”

For decades, stability has been the shipyard’s hallmark.

Its ranks include nearly 600 workers who have earned the titles “master shipbuilders” – employees who have worked continuously at the yard for at least 40 years.

The company now is trying to figure out how to transfer the skill sets of veterans who are moving toward retirement to new workers coming up behind them, Bell said.

Finding qualified candidates isn’t easy, even in a region thick with shipyards and ship-repair work.

“We have pretty stringent requirements, mostly based on the type of work we do,” Bell said.

Many of those hired will need to get a security clearance from the U.S. government. Job candidates must undergo a thorough background check as well as drug screening.

“Unfortunately, that turns away more people than we’d like,” he said. “You’re not going to find a lot of ex-felons here.”

Even when job candidates make the cut and land jobs, and even when they come in with some trade experience, such as in welding or pipe fitting, most of them need specialized training because of the exacting nature and importance of the work, he said.

“We spend more than $50 million a year just in training costs, and we have for years,” Bell said, “and we expect to do that for the foreseeable future.”

The company’s apprentice school, which recently celebrated its 92nd anniversary, also plays a role. Roughly 2,400 of its graduates, including Bell, are in the yard’s management ranks.

As part of an effort to court or groom job candidates, the shipyard plans to engage with what Bell calls “the supply side.”

For example, exiting military personnel will be recruited. “We’re going to be getting more fully involved with folks who are leaving the military,” he said.

While it already has ties to community colleges and trade schools, the shipyard is working to align itself more closely with them.

Through a program called “Career Pathways,” the company is reaching out to elementary, middle and secondary schools, trying to open up students to career alternatives that don’t require a college degree.

Roughly 90 percent of high school students take college-prep courses, Bell said, citing research studies. Yet of that 90 percent, only 60 percent ever actually go to college, he said. Of those, only 56 percent graduate with a bachelor’s degree in six years.

Jobs enabling one to live “the American Dream” – a good income and the ability to own a home and raise a family – can be found at Newport News Shipbuilding, Bell said.

“The challenge is going to be finding those people,” Bell said.

Robert McCabe, (757) 446-2327, robert.mccabe@pilotonline.com