NORTH KINGSTOWN — General Dynamics Electric Boat is approaching 2022 with an emphasis on recruitment and training, including hiring an estimated 1,500 in Rhode Island, the company said Monday at its annual legislative briefing.
“Our need to hire is persistent and long term,” said Kevin Graney, president of General Dynamics Electric Boat. This year, he said, the company needs to hire over 3,000 people, with at least half of those at its Quonset Point facility in North Kingstown.
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The hiring campaign comes as the company moves forward with production on its Columbia-class and Virginia-class nuclear-powered missile submarines.
The work to support this production comes “once in a generation,” and involves possibly “the largest expansion in our history,” Graney said.
“We are hiring and training thousands of new employees, strengthening our national supply base and investing nearly $2 billion in our facilities,” he added.
Electric Boat employs approximately 18,000 people and operates out of two major hubs: one at Quonset in North Kingstown, where steel processing, module assembly and outfitting takes place; and another in Groton, Conn., where workers complete final assembly and tests.
About 32% of Electric Boat employees are Rhode Island residents, according to Graney.
Competition in Russia and China has led to increased demand and a need for more investment in new submarine technology, Graney said, and “the demand on what we produce has never been greater.”
But COVID-19 impacts that have affected most industries also hit Electric Boat, Graney said, with the company’s suppliers and other business partners similarly slowed down.
Last year, the company hired more than 2,500 employees, according to Graney, with 18% of these new hires in engineering and design, 64% in operations and the remainder in support functions.
Still, Electric Boat has experienced a “higher than expected” reduction in personnel, Graney said, which he attributed to retirements and people leaving the job market as many rethink work-life balance.
To meet hiring goals, the company is “expanding our outreach and making sure people understand the opportunity Electric Boat presents,” which Graney said includes advancement opportunities and long-term careers.
Electric Boat has expanded this initiative to schools and is reaching back to the elementary school level onwards in these efforts.
While the company remained open throughout the pandemic, it halted training for a six-month period in 2020 due to the pandemic.
The company did not institute a vaccine requirement because “losing anybody is costly to us,” Graney said, adding about 86% of employees to date are vaccinated.
Several state leaders, including Gov. Daniel J. McKee and Democratic congressional members Sen. Jack Reed, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rep. James R. Langevin and Rep. David N. Cicilline, were in attendance at the virtual meeting, and spoke in favor of the company’s work in Rhode Island.
Cicilline encouraged the company to continue to work on diversity efforts among its workforce, and also called attention to the number of unvaccinated workers, who constitute around 2,500 employees, the company is managing.
“That’s a big group of people in a workplace to be unvaccinated,” he said, though he called Electric Boat “a source of tremendous support for Rhode Island.”
