Decreased demand from the Navy
Bath Iron Works will enter major bidding competitions in the next two years that company officials have said the yard must win to keep up employment amid decreased demand from the Navy for the large surface combatants that have kept thousands of Maine shipbuilders on the job for decades.
The business concern is that losing any work makes getting future work harder. As a result, the company is starting to ask more from its employees, according to BIW President Fred Harris.
“We’re not going to pay people less, but we need to do more per hour than we’ve done,” Harris said.
For years, Bath Iron Works and its advocates, most notably Maine’s congressional delegation, have succeeded in persuading Navy leaders that the quality of ships built in Bath supersedes the higher costs connected with construction in a cold-weather, northeastern shipyard.
“The only reason that BIW has lasted this long is because the Navy knows that it builds the best ships and the highest quality surface combatants in the Western Hemisphere,” said Loren Thompson of the Arlington, Virginia-based Lexington Institute. “Bath is this island of world-class shipbuilding and management skills that has survived in a rather unexpected place.”