400 Naval Shipyard Workers Plead for Jobs : Defense: They traveled to San Diego to attend a hearing of the independent commission on base closure that will submit its recommendations to Bush.

It was a day off for more than 400 workers at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, but it was not much of a holiday. They headed for a crowded auditorium to plead for their jobs, a task that is becoming painfully commonplace for them.

“It’s getting to be tiresome,” said Arturo Ramos, a 25-year veteran of the shipyard and a local AFL-CIO union official. “It’s very frustrating. It seems like nobody can really make any plans for the future.”

Ramos was one of an estimated 400 to 500 shipyard workers who trekked to San Diego recently in chartered buses and cars to argue that their livelihoods should not be sacrificed on the altar of military budget cuts.

It was only the latest effort to save the 48-year-old shipyard, whose future has become impossible to forecast for the 4,200 civilians who work there.

The yard has been subjected to cutbacks and closure threats for years. In January, the Defense Department proposed shutting it, but defense officials seemed to relent after intense lobbying and protests by yard proponents. Then, three weeks ago, an independent commission examining the proposed closures of military installations around the country once again singled out the Long Beach yard as expendable in an era of shrinking military forces. The same commission is weighing the Pentagon’s recommendation to also shutter the Long Beach Naval Station, home port to 38 ships and 16,000 sailors.

(In a letter dated last Friday, Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Deputy Defense Secretary Donald J. Atwood that the Long Beach installation and the San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot are too important militarily to be included on the commission’s list of bases targeted for closure or realignment.)

“We’re taking it very seriously,” stressed E. Dean McCown, a foreman who has worked at the shipyard for 24 years. She and other employees took a vacation day to attend the San Diego hearing of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, an independent panel that must submit its recommendations to President Bush by Monday.

Only a few from Long Beach testified at the hearing, but the others went along for a show of strength. “We’re trying to let them know we’re not the ones to cut,” McCown said.

By now the union leaders and shipyard employees know the arguments by heart: The Long Beach yard has saved the government millions of dollars every year by completing work under cost and ahead of schedule. It is one of only two major dry-dock naval shipyards on the West Coast and virtually next door to San Diego, home port to a sizable number of Pacific Fleet ships that would have to steam to Hawaii or Puget Sound in Washington for major repairs if Long Beach is closed. The Long Beach yard also offers quick, easy access to the open ocean.

“(Closing the yard) is not going to save money at all and it’s going to weaken our defense,” contended Archie Barksdale, another AFL-CIO local official who sent five busloads of workers to San Diego.