Shipbuilders lobbying for more funds

WASHINGTON – Layoffs and an ill-equipped Navy are the major weapons the U.S. shipbuilding industry and its unions are brandishing to get their point across: More money from the 2003 fiscal budget needs to be allocated to the industry – or else.

President Bush’s budget requests $8.6 billion to build five ships for the Navy, one of which Maine’s Bath Iron Works would construct. Those who argue that five ships are not enough point to a potential loss of skilled jobs and a weak Navy.

“We could lose skilled resources in our industry,” said Daniel Duncan, executive director of the AFL-CIO’s Maritime Trades Department. What the president has recommended is not enough to maintain “a viable pool” of specially trained workers in the shipbuilding industry, he said.

The Maritime Trades Department, which oversees 30 unions, advocates a $50 million loan guarantee for 2003. Duncan said his department “is working hard” to persuade lawmakers to implement the program, which, he said, “keeps the domestic shipyards going.”

The American Shipbuilding Association also has been lobbying for additional federal funding.

“Bath Iron Works is Maine’s largest private builder … and, like every shipbuilder in the country, it is under tremendous stress,” said Cynthia Brown, president of the ASA. Lack of money “hurts” Maine’s “highly skilled work force and vendor base,” she said.

Brown, whose office is in Washington, said the ASA has been urging every shipbuilder to contact its congressional delegation “to address the shortfall.”

Brown praised Maine’s lawmakers for pushing for further federal spending on shipbuilding. So did Kendell Pease, spokesman for General Dynamics Corp., which bought Bath Iron Works in 1995.

Speaking about Sen. Susan Collins, who is on the Armed Services Committee, Pease said: “She has been unrelenting. She has been tenacious … and she is not just concerned with the industry, but also concerned about the Navy maintaining its mission.”

Pease said his concern is that the proposed money for shipbuilding will lead to an “up and down” industrial base. The Navy, he said, recommended last month that Congress provide enough funds to build 10 ships. Because the number of new ships proposed remains at five, and because the need for the additional ships persists, Pease said, the shipbuilding industry would have to make up for the lack of ships later.

Pease said there is enough money in the current budget to both “build our Navy and protect our country.”

An advocacy group for the Navy also has been lobbying for more ships. The Navy League of the United States has arranged forums for members of Congress to hear the military benefits of additional spending, according to a report in Congressional Quarterly, a federal policy watchdog publication in Washington.

An obstacle to further federal spending is the lack of consensus on where the money would come from, especially when the Bush administration is proposing spending a large amount of money on homeland security while keeping a tight rein on an escalating federal budget deficit.

Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, told the Bangor Daily News a month ago that the money should be transferred from the missile defense program.

“The Navy places a high priority on personal readiness, munitions, which is fine,” Allen said. “They need to do that, but they also need to deal with the shipbuilding. I would prefer to take at least a third from this national defense account, but this will all shake out in the months to come.”