Labor & Employment Law

Avondale Workers Rally to Save Their Shipyard

By James Parks

Hundreds of union members, elected officials and community leaders joined workers from the Avondale shipyard near New Orleans last Friday to cheer the  Navy?s actions to keep the shipyard working until 2014 and to reaffirm the need for a long-term solution.

Even though the shipyard will be busy, Northrup Grumman, which owns the yard,  is moving full steam ahead on plans to lay off workers beginning Oct. 4 and evetually shut the yard down. The company announced it intends to get out of the shipbuilding business.  

Wearing t-shirts and waving signs with the message, ?Save Our Shipyard,? the crowd made it clear how much the yard, which employs 5,000 workers, is to the community that has already been hit by Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill.

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker told the crowd:

It’s time to throw the heat on Northrup Grumman. They turned the heat up on you, and decided they would throw workers and the whole community into the fire.

Bruce Lightell, a member of Boilermakers Local 1816, who is set to be laid off  next Monday, reflected both the joy and pain workers feel, when he told WVUE-TV:

[The Navy announcement] was really good news, but still people are getting laid off like myself.. I get laid off next week and my wife works here.. She’s getting laid off too. So it’s like a double whammy for some families.

The AFL-CIO Metal Trades Department , along with 10 of its affiliated unions and the AFL-CIO, last month launched a public campaign to gain community support for the shipyard. Avondale workers joined with religious leaders and the New Orleans business community to save the shipyard. Members of the Super-Bowl champion New Orleans Saints also have joined in the ongoing effort, which includes a billboard campaign running across New Orleans.

Metal Trades Department President Ron Ault says the only real solution is to find a buyer for the shipyard and rebuild the industry.

We are continuing our campaign to save our shipyards because the announcement didn’t fix the underlying problems facing the shipbuilding industry?the industry will remain on death row until we can secure a permanent solution?with a multitude of fixes?to restore U.S. shipbuilding to its rightful place in U.S. heavy manufacturing.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on September 27, 2010 (boomark / email).