Newport News yard seeks experienced workforce for nuclear shipbuilding

HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding is taking its recruitment efforts on the road as it looks to bring in more employees to expand its nuclear shipbuilding workforce.

The Virginia-based shipyard met its hiring goals in 2023 and is on track to meet them again in 2024, Xavier Beale, vice president of human resources at Newport News Shipbuilding, told Defense News in a May 23 interview.

The yard plans to hire 3,000 skilled tradespeople this year, but it needs to bring in 19,000 over the next decade, Beale said, adding that the existing training pipelines in the Hampton Roads region is unable to funnel enough new employees toward Newport News.

Beale said volume is only one issue when it comes to recruiting. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck the United States in 2020, a wave of highly experienced workers retired. Replacing those master tradespeople with recent high school graduates has affected productivity.

While it’s difficult to find talent with decades of shipbuilding experience, the next best thing might be finding talent with years of experience as welders or electricians outside of the shipbuilding-industrial base, Beale said.

To that end, the shipyard is adjusting its recruiting efforts. It recently launched an initiative with North Carolina government entities to attract and train skilled trade workers who could continue to reside in North Carolina and take buses to Newport News each day. Beale said more than 1,000 North Carolina residents already work at the yard, and he sees “great untapped potential in that bordering state.”

Nationally, to reach skilled machinists, electricians, welders, pipefitters and more who have worked in sectors other than the shipbuilding-industrial base, “we’re broadening our typical recruiting area,” Beale said. “We’ve identified regions within the nation that may be ripe for harvesting talent, and we’re being intentional with our ’Build It’ campaign to reach and penetrate within those areas, specifically targeting those experienced workforce.” That campaign is meant to highlight various jobs at the yard.

Beale said his team is working on digital outreach, and also sending people across the country to connect with local workforce councils and trade associations in its aim to find experienced workers who might consider moving to Virginia to work on submarines and aircraft carriers.

The focus on hiring experienced workers is twofold. It partly involves efforts to make up for the knowledge and experience lost in the wave of retirements during the pandemic. The other part has to do with new hires without experience — those straight out of high school or coming from other industries — who tend to encounter “a bit of a culture shock” at the shipyard.

Beale said the company is doing what it can to prepare new hires for that, but attrition in the trades has been tough to bring down, especially when the culture shock combines with “the dramatic escalation of wages in the service industry post-COVID, as well as the escalation with minimum wage rates post-COVID.”

“There’s been compression in what historically has been a gap between what we can offer and what’s offered there, so that is a challenge. But we’re doing our best to navigate through that,” Beale added.

Whereas the company might spend 16 weeks training a recent high school graduate who may not stick around for long, the experienced welders and electricians need less training and for the most part understand what they’re getting themselves into.

“Even if it’s not on our platforms, or quite frankly not even our industry — if they have the aptitude and the experience, the time-to-talent acceleration is going to be much quicker than an inexperienced person,” Beale said.

A welder works on a steel panel at Newport News Shipbuilding's Norfolk campus, which opened in November 2023. (Ashley Cowan/HII)

That’s not to say the company has stopped trying to entice locals to join training programs and come work at the yard. In fact, Beale said, some of the U.S. Navy’s funding for the submarine-industrial base in recent years went to the Hampton Roads Workforce Council to coordinate local efforts with high schools, community colleges and trade schools to train new workers and place them in jobs at Newport News and its local suppliers.

Beale said the council over the last 18 to 24 months improved its understanding of regional labor demands, the current capacity to train new workers, and what it would take to increase that output. He said the Navy’s funds have been “instrumental in building capacity within our region.”

Still, he worries the local area can’t meet all the yard’s hiring needs as it expands from about 26,000 personnel today to more than 30,000 in the early 2030s.

“We have reached into the region quite heavily. We still know there’s some untapped potential there, especially in underserved communities and in our rural communities that we’re reaching out to more. But the broader recruitment strategy [looks] at importing more talent into our region,” he said.

Megan Eckstein is the naval warfare reporter at Defense News. She has covered military news since 2009, with a focus on U.S. Navy and Marine Corps operations, acquisition programs and budgets. She has reported from four geographic fleets and is happiest when she’s filing stories from a ship. Megan is a University of Maryland alumna.

HII 旗下的纽波特纽斯造船厂正在开展招聘活动，希望招募更多员工来扩大其核动力造船工人队伍。

纽波特纽斯造船厂人力资源副总裁泽维尔·比尔在 5 月 23 日接受《防务新闻》采访时表示，这家位于弗吉尼亚州的造船厂在 2023 年实现了招聘目标，并且有望在 2024 年再次实现这些目标。

比尔表示，该船厂计划今年雇用 3,000 名技术工人，但在未来十年内需要引进 19,000 名。他还补充说，汉普顿路地区现有的培训渠道无法向纽波特纽斯输送足够的新员工。

比尔表示，招聘时，工作量只是其中一个问题。2020年新冠疫情席卷美国时，大量经验丰富的工人退休。用应届高中毕业生取代这些技艺精湛的工人，影响了生产力。

比尔表示，虽然很难找到拥有数十年造船经验的人才，但次佳之选可能是在造船工业基地之外找到拥有多年焊工或电工经验的人才。

为此，造船厂正在调整招聘策略。近期，造船厂与北卡罗来纳州政府机构合作，启动了一项旨在吸引和培训技术工人的计划，这些工人可以继续居住在北卡罗来纳州，每天乘巴士前往纽波特纽斯上班。比尔表示，目前已有超过1000名北卡罗来纳州居民在该造船厂工作，他认为“这个邻近州蕴藏着巨大的未开发潜力”。

比尔表示，为了在全国范围内招募到那些曾在造船工业以外的行业工作过的熟练机械师、电工、焊工、管道工等人才，“我们正在扩大传统的招聘范围”。“我们已经确定了全国范围内一些可能蕴藏着丰富人才的地区，并有意识地通过‘打造未来’（Build It）活动来触达并渗透到这些地区，尤其针对那些经验丰富的劳动力。”该活动旨在重点宣传船厂的各种工作岗位。

比尔表示，他的团队正在开展数字化推广工作，并派人前往全国各地与当地劳动力委员会和行业协会联系，目的是寻找有经验的工人，他们可能会考虑搬到弗吉尼亚州，在潜艇和航空母舰上工作。

重视招聘经验丰富的员工有两个原因。一方面是为了弥补疫情期间退休潮造成的知识和经验流失。另一方面则与缺乏经验的新员工——那些高中应届毕业生或来自其他行业的人——有关，他们往往会在造船厂遇到“一些文化冲击”。

比尔表示，公司正在尽一切努力让新员工为此做好准备，但技工行业的流失率很难降低，尤其是在文化冲击与“新冠疫情后服务业工资的急剧上涨，以及新冠疫情后最低工资标准的上涨”相结合的情况下。

比尔补充道：“过去我们能提供的服务和当地提供的服务之间存在差距，现在这种差距正在缩小，这是一个挑战。但我们正在尽最大努力克服这一挑战。”

公司可能会花 16 周时间培训一名刚毕业的高中生，而这名毕业生可能不会长期留在公司；相比之下，经验丰富的焊工和电工需要的培训较少，而且他们大多了解自己将要从事的工作。

“即使他们不在我们的平台上，或者坦白说，甚至不在我们的行业内——如果他们有天赋和经验，那么他们成为人才所需的时间将比没有经验的人快得多，”比尔说。

一名焊工正在纽波特纽斯造船厂位于诺福克的厂区内焊接钢板，该厂区于2023年11月启用。（Ashley Cowan/HII）

但这并不意味着该公司停止了吸引当地居民参加培训项目并到船厂工作的努力。事实上，比尔表示，近年来美国海军拨给潜艇工业基地的部分资金流向了汉普顿路劳动力委员会，用于协调当地高中、社区学院和职业学校，培训新工人并将他们安置到纽波特纽斯及其当地供应商的工作岗位。

比尔表示，过去18到24个月里，委员会加深了对区域劳动力需求、现有新员工培训能力以及如何提高产出的了解。他说，海军的资金“对我们地区的能力建设起到了至关重要的作用”。

不过，他担心当地无法满足该船厂的所有招聘需求，因为该船厂的员工人数将从目前的约 26,000 人增加到 2030 年代初的 30,000 多人。

“我们已经在该地区投入了大量资源。我们仍然知道那里还有一些尚未开发的潜力，尤其是在服务不足的社区和我们正在加强覆盖的农村社区。但更广泛的招聘战略着眼于为我们地区引进更多的人才，”他说。

梅根·埃克斯坦是《防务新闻》的海军作战记者。自2009年以来，她一直从事军事新闻报道，主要关注美国海军和海军陆战队的行动、采购项目和预算。她曾报道过四个不同地理区域的舰队，最喜欢在舰艇上进行新闻报道。梅根毕业于马里兰大学。