Reed, Lieberman hope to gain $425M in funds
Electric Boat in the late 1980s employed about 25,600 people at six facilities, including major operations at its Quonset Point and Groton, Conn., sites. In a five-year period, the U.S. Navy had ordered 25 EB submarines. Things were going well for the company.
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Not anymore. During the past six years, the U.S. Navy has ordered six submarines, driving employment down to about 11,000, less than half what it was 20 years ago.
And Electric Boat spokesman Robert Hamilton said he expects more layoffs now that the engineering and design work for the newest Virginia-class submarines nears completion.
Design for the USS Jimmy Carter, a Seawolf-class special operations submarine, is finished. So is design and engineering for the conversion of four Ohio-class submarines modified for special operations.
“They all came to maturity at the same time,” Hamilton said. “At the height of it we had about 3,500 designers and engineers on staff. That’s obviously going to have to come down. The question is how far.”
U.S. Sen. Jack Reed said he is backing legislation he “hopes” will save design and engineering jobs at Electric Boat, a division of Connecticut-based General Dynamics. He and fellow Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman, of Connecticut, along with other lawmakers from both states, are pressing Congress for $25 million to fund submarine research and design.
“This is the first time in many decades we’re not actively designing a new submarine,” Reed said, referring to the lack of a commitment from the U.S. Navy to commission a new generation of submarines. “We’re at a point now where this research and development money would help to soften the blow from the downward slope of work for designers at the yard.”
Though the bulk of Electric Boat’s design and engineering takes place in Groton, what goes on there relates closely to what goes on in Quonset Point, namely the manufacturing of the front end of submarines, Hamilton said.
To make matters worse, last year the Navy notified Electric Boat it would start repairing its fleet at public shipyards, taking a large chunk of the company’s repair and overhaul business with it, he said.
“What the legislators are concerned about is … every piece of the business that goes away increases our cost of doing business,” Hamilton said. “What happens then is it becomes uncompetitive. And if it becomes uncompetitive then you worry that your business is at risk.”
Electric Boat employs almost 2,000 workers at Quonset Point. In efforts to maintain those jobs, Reed and Lieberman also are pushing for approval of a bill that would appropriate $400 million to the U.S. Navy for submarine funding. The hope is the money would initiate the construction of a second sub each year starting in 2009, Reed said.
“We’re trying to keep the cost of submarines down,” he said, adding that the average cost of a submarine is about $2.4 billion. “That helps us in terms of being able to buy more submarines with given dollars.”
And consequently, it would “keep more people at work,” Reed said. “If we get to build a second ship, that will put more work in Rhode Island.”
Hamilton was quick to add that doubling the number of submarines being built won’t double the number of employees the company has working on the projects. There would be an increase, he said, but more importantly, the company would more effectively and efficiently use the work force already there.
Reed said getting production to two a year also could benefit the military in terms of strategic defense. Because of the retirement of older subs and the lack of development of new subs “there are projected periods in which our submarine fleet could shrink to as few as 40 ships in the fleet and that really constrains the war fighters,” he said. The U.S. Navy currently has 72 submarines in service, said Lt. John Gay, spokesman for the Navy.
But Reed said it’s likely neither the $25 million authorization bill nor the $400 million authorization bill will be voted on until September.
“We want the Navy to be much more vocal and supportive of doing the two ships as quickly as possible,” he said. “They’d like to see a plan [that shows] that if they go to two ships it will really reduce the cost of each ship.”
It’s ultimately up to the Navy to decide where the money will go should the funds be approved, Hamilton said.
“We would argue we are the premium, premier designers and that it should largely go here,” he said.
