Destroyers into windmills A statewide campaign kicks off this week to convert Maine’s military manufacturing into environmentally sustainable industry for the future BY CHRISTIE TOTH

A year ago, when activists at Peace Action Maine began planning a campaign to end Maine’s economic dependence on military industry, converting those industries to environmentally sustainable, non-military manufacturing sounded pie in the sky. A year ago, Bath Iron Works, Maine’s largest private employer, had a contract to build seven DD(X) Destroyers for the United States Navy.

Now, the president’s budget proposal has slashed the destroyer order by more than half, and the Navy is considering giving the entire contract to a shipyard in Mississippi. As the Maine delegation fights what may be a losing battle on the Hill, economic conversion is beginning to look like more than an idealistic pipe dream. It is beginning to look necessary for Midcoast Maine’s economic survival.

With more than 6200 employees, BIW is Maine’s largest private employer; however, despite a robust shipbuilding schedule, the yard has been hemorrhaging jobs for years. Over the last six months, with 51 layoffs here, another 137 there, BIW has eliminated nearly 500 positions. And those layoffs barely register compared to what the company, a subsidiary of the Virginia-based General Dynamics Corporation, may be facing in the near future.

Rumors about drastic cuts to the Navy’s shipbuilding budget began circulating before Christmas. It became official on February 7, when the President announced his 2006 budget proposal: The order for 12 DD(X) Destroyers, which had already been reduced to seven last July, was further pared down to five. A few weeks later, the Navy announced that, given the reduced destroyer order, it was exploring the possibility of awarding the entire contract to a single shipyard, rather than splitting the order between BIW and Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, as it had originally planned.

Industry analysts believe that the Navy has been looking to move destroyer production to the Gulf of Mexico for some time. Conspiracy theorists wonder whether Maine isn’t being punished for going to Kerry in the 2004 election. Navy officials simply cite the changing needs of the military in a post-9/11 world.

"We are moving to a smoother, lighter, more agile ship. Rather than a few larger and very expensive ships, we are building more ships that are smaller and more lethal," said Navy Secretary Gordon England at a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing earlier this month. "The Navy is changing and the industrial base needs to change with the Navy."

The new vessel that has captured hearts and minds in the Pentagon is the Littoral Combat Ship, a small, speedy shallow-water craft with interchangeable modular weapons systems. It is ironic that BIW has done much of the design work on these ships, but the LCS building contracts were awarded to other shipyards. The Navy’s shipbuilding budget has been nearly halved since 2001, but it wants to commission more than 50 LCS vessels over the next few years. It appears willing to sacrifice seven Bath-built destroyers to do so.

The Maine congressional delegation is doing everything in its power to push against the carrier-like momentum of Donald Rumsfeld’s vision for leaner, meaner armed forces. Senators Snowe and Collins warn of the grave dangers of single-source destroyer construction in Mississippi, citing everything from terrorist attacks to hurricanes. Congressman Tom Allen rails about the costs of the Iraq war, which he says could purchase a destroyer a week. None of Maine’s elected representatives has been above a little fear-mongering about China.

Regardless of whether the delegation manages to get more made-in-Maine destroyers back on the budget, the protracted wrangling and changing timelines are likely to disrupt BIW’s transition from the nearly complete Arleigh-Burke Destroyer program to its next set of projects, and that could cost thousands of BIW workers their jobs. In the long term, the shrinking military shipbuilding industry no longer provides enough work to sustain all of the nation’s shipyards. As the senators themselves wrote to President Bush this month, "The US shipbuilding industrial base has already endured a 75-percent reduction in employment during the past 15 years."

Perhaps it is time for the Maine delegation to read what activist Bruce Gagnon calls "the writing on the wall."

"Go out there to the Iron Works," says Gagnon. "Take a look at the administrative building, the warehouses. The paint is peeling, broken windows are boarded up with plywood. It’s a sign of disinvestment. General Dynamics has had one foot out the door the whole time."

The General Dynamics Corporation, which purchased Bath Iron Works in 1995, deals almost entirely in military industry.

"We’ve taken a look at what General Dynamics and other corporations have done with these facilities when the military contracts dry up," says Greg Field, Executive Director of Peace Action Maine. "They’ve moth-balled the places, laid everybody off.

"The issue," says Field, "is whether Maine will be proactive, rather than reactive . . . For two decades, Maine has been reactive to the loss of jobs across all manufacturing sectors. We need to develop a healthy Maine economy, and get off the boom and bust of military contracts."

Peace Action Maine (PAM) is a nonprofit activist organization working to provide "a voice of education and a center for all people committed to disarmament and creative responses to conflict." On April 1, they will launch a two-year campaign to shift Maine’s manufacturing base away from reliance on military industry. While PAM would support the introduction of any socially responsible, ecologically sound nonmilitary manufacturing in Maine, their most treasured vision is to make Maine a national leader in the production of sustainable energy technologies, such as solar panels and wind turbines.

Economic conversion is not a new idea. "In the 1980s and early 1990s, during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there was a big push among activists to convert military industries to civilian manufacturing," says Gagnon. "The Machinists Union led the way. Then George the First invaded Panama, and there was the Gulf War, and conversion talks disappeared.

"Now the peace movement has realized that we will never end war until we deal with the jobs issue."

Maine is certainly facing the jobs issue. Over the last 35 years, the state has faced a 46-percent decline in manufacturing positions, which pay an average of $7000 more per year that the primarily service-sector jobs that are replacing them. From 2000 to 2003, the state lost 5000 manufacturing jobs a year. "And what we’re seeing," says Field, "is that even when military contracts are running high, employment is declining in all military industries here in Maine." The value of shipbuilding contracts in Maine has risen by billions of dollars over the last decade, but since 1994, BIW has reduced its workforce by nearly 3000.

"We know," says Gagnon, "that nonmilitary manufacturing creates more jobs per dollar spent than military industry. Military manufacturing is incredibly capital-intensive, where other kinds of manufacturing are more labor-intensive." He cites a series of studies for the National Commission for Economic Conversion, conducted by Columbia University’s Seymour Melman.

The idea of developing the green energy manufacturing industry in Maine may be more than wishful thinking. Denmark invested early on in windmill technologies, and currently produces more than half of the world’s wind turbines. One of Denmark’s largest manufacturing sites is a converted shipyard in Copenhagen.

Here in the United States, officials in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, recently announced plans to build a new manufacturing plant in neighboring Ebensburg. This facility will provide windmill blades for the Spanish wind-energy company, Gamesa Corp. The plant is expected to create more than 1000 permanent jobs in the region over the next five years, in an area that has long been depressed by the relocation of manufacturing jobs overseas. Officials attracted Gamesa to their location through an instructive combination of state and local grants, loans, and tax incentives.