Private Shipyards Favor Closing Navy Site

While workers at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard are lobbying against a proposal that would close the yard and eliminate their jobs, some shipyard executives in San Diego would like nothing better than to see the facility shut.

The Long Beach shipyard, with 4,300 civilian employees, is the Navy’s main repair yard on the West Coast, handling an estimated 75% of Navy repair work completed by West Coast yards. As such, it competes directly with private yards up and down the West Coast, including the National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. and Southwest Marine in San Diego.

The nation’s private yards have been scrambling for work in recent years because few new commercial ships are being built. Work on new military ships also is slowing, and yards are redoubling their efforts to win military repair work.

A decision to close the Long Beach yard would “significantly increase the potential for . . . (repair) work at private yards,” said Nassco spokesman Fred Hallett. “And there is significant idle capacity at those (West Coast-based) private yards.”

The federal Base Closure and Realignment Commission, which will issue a final report to Congress on Monday, has recommended that the Naval Training Center in San Diego be closed and the Marine Corps Recruit Depot be downsized.

It also stunned municipal officials in Long Beach by recommending that the 48-year-old Navy repair yard, which previously had been taken off the hit list, be returned to the list of bases recommended for closure.

In a surprising letter last week, Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nation’s top military officer, urged the commission to spare the Long Beach yard, saying its closure would “seriously degrade dry-dock capability for all large ships in the Southern California area.”

But executives at privately owned yards argue that their facilities are more cost-effective than the Long Beach yard. “Private yard labor costs are lower, that’s a known fact,” Hallett said. “We know that our productivity (at Nassco) is higher than at the Long Beach Navy Yard.”

Long Beach shipyard workers and city officials would beg to differ. The Long Beach yard prides itself on being economically competitive, outbidding private yards and then completing work before schedule and under cost.

The secretary of the Navy recently commended the yard for saving the Pentagon more than $80 million during the past four years by completing work under cost.

Further, the loss of the shipyard would deal yet another in a string of blows suffered by the Long Beach economy, which is also threatened by the proposed closure of the Long Beach Naval Station and the Navy hospital. McDonnell Douglas, the city’s largest employer, is in financial trouble and losing contracts. The city’s retail sales tax base is paltry and its hometown department store chain, Buffums, recently folded.

While city officials and shipyard workers fight feverishly to keep the Long Beach yard in business, some contend there has been a veritable conspiracy under way in San Diego to shut it down. Save Our Shipyard, a committee appointed by the Long Beach City Council, has alleged that private yards have made hefty contributions to members of Congress in the past, urging them to award contracts to private repair yards and put the Long Beach facility out of business.

If they succeed, it could mean less business for the private yards, not more, said Bob Sabol, Save Our Shipyard secretary. Private yards in San Diego have neither the equipment nor the expertise to work on combat ships.

“It’s a chuckle in a way,” Sabol said. “The private yards get some work from the Navy now and they would probably lose everything.”

Times staff writer Faye Fiore contributed to this story.