Plenty of jobs, will workers follow?

HIRE GROUND: A rigger prepares to move a large component in the high bay shop at Electric Boat’s Quonset Point submarine manufacturing facility. / COURTESY ELECTRIC BOAT
HIRE GROUND: A rigger prepares to move a large component in the high bay shop at Electric Boat’s Quonset Point submarine manufacturing facility. / COURTESY ELECTRIC BOAT

Electric Boat’s plan to hire 650 employees this year at its expanding facility at Quonset Business Park in North Kingstown is a precursor to a massive ramp-up expected to more than double the current Quonset workforce of 2,800 over the next 15-20 years.
Meeting the short- and long-term hiring goals is going to be a “challenge,” admitted Craig Sipe, Electric Boat’s senior human resources manager at Quonset, where he has worked for 14 of his 34 years with the shipbuilder.
The educational pipeline for welders, shipfitters, electricians and pipefitters has shrunk with the increasing focus on technology in the decades since Electric Boat’s hiring wave in the 1970s and 1980s – the last wave that was as large as the company’s current employment surge.
“When we hired at this magnitude before, there was much more of a vocational structure in the country, more literacy in the trades, things like shop math,” said Sipe. “Now there are not that many people skilled in the trades out there. We’ve hired as many as we can find, so we expect most of the applicants to be entry level.”
A high school diploma, including a GED, is preferred, but not required, for the vast majority of those jobs, said Sipe. But even for entry-level jobs, some candidates are just not workforce ready, he said.
“There’s a skills gap when these students come out of high school, but it starts way before that. Some of the kids we’ll be hiring are in third grade now,” said Sipe.
What’s missing?
“For some, it’s math skills or English as a second language,” said Sipe. “Most of these jobs require reading blueprints and understanding fractions and decimals. There are notes they have to read, in English.”
Electric Boat offers blueprint-reading classes on a voluntary basis and community colleges have programs to strengthen reading and math skills. But there are other basic workforce-development issues that make filling those jobs a challenge. “For the employees who don’t make it through their probationary period, some just find the work is just not right for them, and that’s OK. But for others who don’t make it through that initial period, the main reason is attendance,” said Sipe. “Coming to work on time is an issue in being workforce ready. There are other decisions they have to make – for instance, they have to pass a drug test.”
The 2014 hiring and more to follow to reach 6,000 employees is reflected in Electric Boat’s new 25-year lease, approved by Quonset Development Corporation in December, to extend and expand the shipbuilder’s footprint at Quonset Business Park.
Electric Boat currently leases 100 acres and owns an additional 33 at the business park. The expansion adds 42 acres, which includes more than 1 million feet of building space to construct specialized facilities for submarine projects.
In addition to manufacturing modules for the Virginia-class submarines, production of which is increasing from one to two per year, the ramp-up at Quonset is for the construction of modules for the Ohio Replacement Program, to replace the aging fleet of Ohio-class submarines, which launch Trident missiles.
“The last one of those Trident subs delivered was in 1997,” Electric Boat Director of Strategic Planning Thomas N. Plante said at a Jan. 14 announcement of the company’s expansion plans at the Crowne Plaza Providence-Warwick.
Those aging subs, and their replacements, are brightening the future of the Rhode Island economy.
“We’ve got a positive business environment here,” said Plante. “As long as the Navy maintains support for the program, we’ve got a great future in the state of Rhode Island. There are a lot of jobs coming, especially for young people who are interested in them.”
With its current workforce of 2,800 at Quonset, factoring in attrition of about 250 per year, due in large part to an aging workforce, employment at the Rhode Island facility will level off to 3,200 for about five years. “Then we’ll ramp up in the 2020s and into the early 2030s to a peak of about 6,000,” Electric Boat President Jeffery S. Geiger said.
The 650 jobs promised to Rhode Island in 2014 will help fill in a critical segment of the state’s workforce, said R.I. Commerce Corporation Executive Director Marcel A. Valois.
“These are high-paid, middle-class jobs [in some cases] in manufacturing with an array of opportunities. Everyone is not going to go to college or be an engineer,” said Valois. “I’m thrilled to see Electric Boat making a long-term investment in Rhode Island and ramping up and potentially, this will continue.”
Electric Boat is working with the Governor’s Workforce Board, New England Institute of Technology and youth and veterans organizations to find workforce-ready employees, or to train them.
A collaborative internship program with the Governor’s Workforce Board over the past couple of years had about 40 participants and 34 were hired, said Sipe.
Another internship program recently resulted in the hiring of two military veterans and two young people who had been recruited through youth organizations.
A promising workforce-training program is in effect with a $2.5 million grant to NEIT that established the Shipbuilding/Marine Advanced Manufacturing Institute, called SAMI, said Sipe.
“I think at the end of the day, the goal needs to be to make these entry-level folks more prepared to go into the workforce,” said Sipe. “There’s not a lot of discussion about manufacturing in Rhode Island now. We want to see more focus on manufacturing in the state and on preparing people to be workforce ready, because we have a lot of jobs looming on the horizon.” •

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3 COMMENTS

  1. This is more than a job for someone it is a huge career opportunity. These opportunities aren’t readily available and should be ceased when they are. At Atrion we have a strong apprenticeship program built around technology. The candidates that have joined us with no experience have grown tremendously and look at it as like altering decision that they made for their future.
    I encourage people to investigate the opportunities at Electric Boat.