Navy Trimming 900 Jobs at Its Long Beach Shipyard

The Long Beach Naval Shipyard has begun to cut 900 jobs, 13% of its total employees, in a continuing work force reduction that will eliminate as many as 1,500 jobs at the government-owned yard by the end of 1986.

A shipyard official said Thursday that the cutbacks, which are being done through layoffs and attrition, are part of a nationwide push to reduce expenses as repair work slows at Navy shipyards. As many as 600 more Long Beach jobs could be cut beginning next spring.

Workers have known that heavy cuts were coming since April, when the Navy announced that it was eliminating about 5,600 of the 78,000 jobs at its eight shipyards by Dec. 31. Officials explained that the number of Navy ships overhauled had dropped to a projected 41 for fiscal 1986 from a high of 90 in the 1977 fiscal year.

The sprawling Long Beach facility, the hardest hit of the government-owned shipyards, will have only about 5,900 workers by Jan. 1, down from about 6,800 in April, said Gil Bond, shipyard industrial relations director.

Of the 900 jobs to be cut locally, 252 will involve the firing of permanent full-time employees, Bond said. Those employees will be laid off Dec. 7, he said.

Another 300 job cuts are being made among the yard’s full-time temporary employees; those cutbacks began in early November, Bond said, and should be completed by January.

The remainder, about 350 positions, will be eliminated through attrition, he said. Those included many who took advantage of an early retirement program offered by the Navy.

The Long Beach shipyard, where the battleship New Jersey was refurbished in 1983, will lose even more employees when the modernization of another World War II battleship, the Missouri, is complete in March, Bond said.

“We have a couple of other ships coming in early next year, but we expect to be down to 5,300 to 5,500” workers by the end of 1986, he said.

Bond said he did not know when the reductions will end.

The Navy had announced a reduction of 1,200 jobs this year for Long Beach, but increased work has saved about 300 positions, he said.

Navy shipyards increasingly are being forced to compete with private yards for Navy repair contracts. Last summer, the Long Beach facility became the Navy’s first to bid against private companies for Navy repair contracts, according to Bond, but lost the contract to a private bidder.

The loss of many highly skilled workers to early retirement this year because of forced reductions will hurt the competitiveness of the Long Beach facility, said Frank Rodriguez, president of the Federal Employees Metal Trades Council, which represents 13 shipyard unions. “This plays hell with efficiency,” he said.

The Navy Department has said it probably will eliminate at least another 1,300 jobs at the eight shipyards by Sept. 30, 1986.

This year’s money-saving cutbacks began in February, when the Navy imposed a shipyard hiring freeze and limited overtime to 7% of the total hours worked, compared to the 16.4% that the shipyards averaged in fiscal 1984.