Increasing wages for shipyard workers is the top challenge when attracting and retaining everyone from pipefitters to naval architects, a naval analyst told the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.
For those in the trades – welders, electricians, pipefitters and shipfitters – the working conditions are “hot, cold and dirty” with wages only a couple dollars more than fast food workers, the Congressional Budget Office’s Eric Labs told the HASC.
At the same time, many shipyard workers’ cost-of-living expenses are rising faster than inflation, Labs said. He noted that the COVID-19 pandemic and remote work possibilities saw more highly paid white-collar workers moving from larger cities to more distant areas like Bath, Maine, the home of guided-missile destroyer builder General Dynamics Bath Ironworks.
Labs said that as a result housing costs in Bath are now comparable to Washington’s Northern Virginia suburbs.
The pay differential for shipyard jobs used to be three to four times greater than other occupations, but now runs between 1.2 and 1.4 times higher, said Brett Seidle, the acting assistant Navy secretary for research, development and acquisition.
Ron O’Rourke, the naval affairs analyst at the Congressional Research Service, said the workforce issue applies to white collar shipbuilders like designers, naval architects and naval engineers as well as the trades.
“These are engineers that can take other jobs,” he said.
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