Labor & Employment Law

Workers Fighting to Save 5,000 Jobs at Avondale Shipyard

By James Parks

The residents of New Orleans rallied to survive Hurricanes Katrina and Rita five years ago. They are slowly recovering from the largest oil spill in U.S. history. But now they are coming together to fight a disaster that would cause more economic harm than the hurricanes and the BP spill combined.

 One of the largest, best-paying employers in the Crescent City, Avondale Shipyard with 5,000 union employees, is shutting down in 2013. Northrop Grumman, which owns the Avondale yard and Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., is moving production from the two Gulf Coast yards to what will be its lone remaining yard in Newport News, Va.  All the yards are union.

 But the union movement in New Orleans is not about to let the yard close without a fight.  Union leaders are trying to find a buyer for the shipyards and are enlisting the support of elected officials and the U.S. Navy, Avondale?s biggest customer, to save the yard and the jobs. They have teamed up with a bipartisan group of elected officials in Louisiana to urge the federal government to intervene and help the state keep the yard open. (See video above).

 Unions and community groups have purchased billboards to try and convince officials and Northrup to ?Save the Shipyard.? A major rally and march is scheduled for October as well. New Orleans Saints players, members of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), have joined the effort as well. 

Ron Ault, president of the AFL-CIO Metal Trades Department, says for every direct shipyard job, there are three additional jobs in the shipbuilding supply chain that depend on shipbuilding activity as a customer; and seven more in the immediate community where the shipyard operates? the vendors, suppliers, contractors, grocery stores, bars, and gas stations that will evaporate when the jobs go away. He says:

In New Orleans?when 5,000 shipyard jobs disappear, the support network collapses?35,000 jobs lost. Businesses in 43 other states provide materials, equipment and supplies to Avondale?s shipbuilding?subtract another 15,000 jobs.  The decision to padlock a business that supports 5,000 good jobs expands to a loss of 50,000 jobs. America can?t afford that.

Ault says the Navy also has a responsibility here. Writing in The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, Ault says:

The federal government created the problems in the shipbuilding industry through its decades-long neglect. Taxpayer costs involved in buying a little more breathing time for the shipbuilding industry would be negligible. The immediate threat could be allayed if the Navy simply put a little front loading in its shipbuilding schedule. The cost of doing nothing is huge.    

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on September 14, 2010 (boomark / email).