BATH

Bath Iron Works will lay off 40 shipyard employees, effective Sept. 6.

The layoffs occur in the pipecovering and insulation trades, and are due to lack of work in those fields, shipyard officials said Thursday.

Layoffs at BIW are a normal part of the cycle of work at the shipyard. Ship productions span from four to five years, and different trades are needed at different times. Often, employees will be unemployed for a while and be recalled within months.

“We’re in a constant state of trying to balance what is going on in the shipyard with the trades we need to get the job done,” Jim DeMartini, spokesman for BIW, said Thursday.

BIW has just received $2.8 billion in contracts to build four new DDG 51 destroyers, and the deckhouse for one of the Zumwalt-class destroyers.

DeMartini pointed out that although 40 positions are being cut in pipecovering and insulation, 370 people have been hired across 15 production trades since the beginning of this year, while 55 new hires were also added in the other three unions and in salaried positions.

“In addition, 125 employees who have been laid off have been recalled,” DeMartini said.

He said he did not have a time frame for when, or if, the laid-off workers might be recalled.

According to collective bargaining agreements, positions to be eliminated are sent to the unions affected 10 working days before the layoff, and the union determines who loses a job, based strictly on seniority.

Once the names are known, those individuals have seven days’ notice. However, some of them may be offered open positions in other areas of the shipyard for which they are qualified, so the final number of job losses may not be as many as 40.

When asked if the timing for the layoffs might prove problematic as BIW pursues its hope for a tax break from the city, DeMartini acknowledged that the timing was unfortunate.

“We certainly would have preferred it otherwise, but it’s a situation driven by production needs,” he said.

Dan Dowling of Local S6 said that the union will contact the affected workers next week.

“I was hoping we’d get through the year without any layoffs,” Dowling said. “We made it pretty deep into the year, too.”

The losses include 25 insulator and 15 pipecoverer positions.

“We encourage the company to fit these folks into other trades,” Dowling said. “It could be a loan from one trade to another, or a temporary, short term recall, a month or more, to another part of the shipyard.” Dowling said he wasn’t sure how successful that process would be. “Barring moving the workers into other positions, there will be 40 people hitting the street on September 6,” he said.

ghamilton@timesrecord.com

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