Cuts to the military budget to keep the unearned government entitlements in place.
Driving across the Berkley Bridge, you may have noticed an unusual sight.
General Dynamics NASSCO-Norfolk shipyard, the former Metro Machine yard, is empty.
The lean, gray warships normally docked there, often patched in places with mysterious white shrouds, are so much a part of the waterfront that they’re virtually invisible.
Until they’re gone.
“We’re at the bottom of the bathtub right now,” said Bill Crow, president of the Virginia Ship Repair Association, a regional trade group. “I have never seen this port that empty.”
Hampton Roads is home to seven privately owned Navy ship-repair companies, more than any other port in the country, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report.
That, of course, doesn’t include Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, one of four Navy-run yards nationwide.
“When even one of those facilities is not working at capacity, part of a national security asset is going to waste,” Crow said.
Since last fall, a wave of layoffs has swept over some of the companies, putting about 1,700 employees out of work.
The reasons for the job cuts vary by yard.
Most have occurred at Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding, where nearly 1,220 employees have been let go since September, though 75 were later called back. Another 300 layoffs are still possible by the end of the year.
The company has attributed the reductions to work wrapping up on three aircraft carriers over the next year or so.
BAE’s Norfolk yard has laid off about 575 since September, citing a drop in the number of Navy surface-combatant vessels homeported in the region available for maintenance and modernization, as well as changes in the Navy’s scheduling for repair services.
Now with about 900 employees, down from 1,475 last fall, the yard isn’t out of the woods yet.
“There are other competitions coming in the second half of the year that will be important for us to maintain workload,” said Karl Johnson, a BAE spokesman.