THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 2, 1995 TAG: 9502020437
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF AND WIRE REPORT
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
The specter of a massive labor strike is looming over Newport News Shipbuilding for the first time in 16 years.
The giant Peninsula shipyard's management and its largest union are still far apart in the negotiations for a new contract to replace the one that expires at midnight Sunday, a union official said.
Yard negotiators continue to demand that workers accept cuts in wages and benefits, said Judith Boyd, sub-district director with the United Steelworkers of America.
The Steelworkers Local 8888, which represents the yard's hourly workers, has scheduled a meeting with members Sunday to give them details of the shipyard's final offer. The meeting will be held at the Hampton University Convocation Center at 2 p.m.
A vote on the contract proposal will be scheduled for early next week, Boyd said. The current contract will likely be extended until the vote is tallied.
``A negative vote is a strike vote,'' Boyd said.
The local has received authorization from the union's international headquarters to strike, she said. A strike would be the first at the yard since a violent three-month walkout in 1979.
The union's only other option is to work without a contract on the yard's terms, Boyd said.
Neither Boyd nor shipyard spokesman Michael T. Hatfield would discuss specifics of the contract talks. Yard executives have said repeatedly that concessions from the union are necessary to make the shipyard competitive.
In the wake of declining defense spending, Newport News Shipbuilding has been trying to diversify its shipbuilding backlog, long dominated by Navy orders, with work from commercial and foreign military customers. It has met with limited success.
As Navy ship orders fell, the shipyard has slashed its labor force to about 20,000 from a high of nearly 30,000 in the 1980s. It plans to layoff an additional 5,000 to 6,000 workers by the end of 1996 even as it tries to diversify its shipbuilding backlog.
The yard has about $6 billion of work ordered, including contracts to build three Nimitz-class aircraft carriers and three Los Angeles-class submarines. Its only commercial contract is a $152-million order for up to four double-hull tankers.
The Steelworkers represent more than 12,000 blue-collar employees at the yard, though its membership only numbers about 7,000. Only union members will be allowed to vote on the contract.
Shipyard spokesman Hatfield declined to comment on whether the yard is preparing for a walkout.
The last strike at the yard began in January 1979 after the shipyard declined to recognize the Steelworkers as the bargaining representative of its hourly workers. The Steelworkers had ousted the shipyard's old union, the Peninsula Shipbuilders Association, in a 1978 vote.
The union called off the strike after the shipyard agreed to recognize it.
The union and the shipyard had good relations throughout much of the 1980s. Contracts in 1980 and 1983 gave workers 25 percent raises. In 1987 workers approved a contract giving them a 3 percent raise and an $1,800 cash bonus, but increasing what they paid for health care.
The current contract, approved in 1991, gave workers a 14 percent raise and a $1,000 bonus, while further increasing employees' out-of-pocket health care costs.
But now the yard wants its workers to give it something back. It already cut some benefits of salaried workers in a move designed to save the yard up to $10 million a year. Starting Jan. 1, salaried workers no longer got overtime pay and the night-shift differential, which paid workers a little extra for working at night.
KEYWORDS: UNION STRIKE by CNB