Long Beach Yard Guaranteed Work on 3 Ships

The Navy has decided to have three cruisers overhauled at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard as originally scheduled and not open the lucrative contracts to bids from private shipyards, officials said Friday.

But private shipyards will have a chance to compete for work on a fourth warship that had been scheduled to enter the Long Beach yard for renovation in the next fiscal year, Assistant Navy Secretary Everett Pyatt said in a letter to Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif).

Pyatt’s letter was well received among shipyard workers and area elected officials who had feared that loss of the ship renovation jobs would leave the 5,600-employee facility without any work early next year, causing massive layoffs or closure of the facility.

Employee groups and politicians had mounted a lobbying effort to pressure the Navy to stand by its plans to refit the ships in Long Beach.

“This is an extremely important decision,” said Rep. Daniel E. Lungren (R-Long Beach), one of the authors of a letter to Pyatt signed by 17 congressmen. “It shows the Navy’s dedication to maintaining the viability of the Long Beach yard.”

The lobbying effort was spurred by a little-noticed provision in the 1988 federal defense appropriations act that requires open bidding among government and private shipyards for the four ship repair contracts.

But Pyatt said in his letter, dated Wednesday, that ordering competitive bidding on all four ships could delay their return to active duty. The bidding would cause a seven-month delay in work on the first cruiser scheduled for repair, the Horne, and there would be a “ripple effect” setting back work on the Gridley and Halsey, he said.

Pratt said that, following receipt of legal opinions, Naval officials decided they were “not precluded from assigning these ships to public shipyards,” such as the Long Beach Naval Shipyard.

“To meet the intent of Congress,” however, bidding will be conducted for an overhaul of the destroyer Callaghan among public and private yards on the West Coast, Pyatt said.

Pyatt was responding to a letter sent by Wilson last month that urged him to seek a legal opinion on the bidding provision.

Gil Bond, the shipyard’s director of industrial relations, said three ships could keep the yard busy for a year starting in August when the Horne arrives for refitting.

The value of the contracts has been estimated at $100 million per ship.

Long Beach Mayor Ernie Kell called Pyatt’s letter “extremely good news” that will guarantee jobs at the shipyard, the city’s second-largest employer behind McDonnell Douglas Corp.