Back to work

After eight weeks, the strike at Bath Iron Works is over. Labor praises the gains it made in wages, benefits and, most importantly, work rules, through hard-fought negotiations. Management says it’s just glad the company can get back to building the world’s best ships. For Maine’s largest industrial employer, it’s pretty much back to business as usual.

Business as usual at an unusually high price. Multiply the 4,800 striking members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers by the 55 days they were idled and you get more than a quarter-million lost work days. Multiply that by the wages and benefits lost and it probably is a substantial underestimation to say that the strike blew a $50-million hole in the state’s economy.

The damage doesn’t stop there. Union leaders estimate that as much as 10 percent of members bailed out and took jobs elsewhere, including out-of-state; a good many, perhaps most, will not return. At a time when it is increasingly clear that one the greatest impediments to economic growth in Maine is its shortage of skilled workers, Maine just lost several hundred skilled workers.

This could be written off simply as a tough break, an example of the bad things that happen when labor and management disagree, if it weren’t for two things: The strike would not have occurred if the contract management offered had been less insulting; and Maine taxpayers’ unusual interest in this settlement as significant investors in the company.

Three years ago, the Legislature rushed through a $60-million tax break for the shipyard, despite substantial public objections about the haste and strong doubts that BIW’s parent, General Dynamics Corp., one of the nation’s largest and most profitable defense contractors, needed Maine’s money. The city of Bath came through with an even larger tax break and BIW is one of the major recipients of benefits under the state’s $50-million Business Equipment Tax Reimbursement program.

Since then, legislation that would have Maine join the trend occurring in most other states and tie tax breaks to employer performance – wages, benefits, working conditions, job growth (or at least the absence of layoffs) – have been defeated by vague warnings from the business community that any such standards would send employers fleeing.

Perhaps the upcoming Legislature will give this issue serious consideration, now that it has some real numbers to work with.