U.S. Senators Susan Collins, R-ME, left, and Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, visited the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard on April 17 with Navy Secretary John Phelan. It was Phelan’s first visit to any U.S. public shipyard since the Senate confirmed his nomination to the post. (Photo by Deb Cram, Seacoastonline)
Despite being approved for hire, nearly 150 new workers at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard have yet to begin their employment due to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management holding up their processing, according to New Hampshire and Maine U.S. senators.
Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine; Angus King, I-Maine; and Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, are urging the Office of Personnel Management to expedite the yard workers’ hiring. The trio sent a letter to the Office of Personnel Management’s acting director Charles Ezell on Monday, May 12.
The three senators met last month with Secretary of the Navy John Phelan at the 225-year-old Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, his first visit to any of the four public Navy shipyards.
“During that meeting, we were made aware that nearly 150 personnel have received initial job offers for civilian general schedule positions at the shipyard, which have been approved by Secretary Phelan, but have not been processed through the Office of Personnel Management (OPM),” Collins, King and Shaheen’s joint letter states.
“As a result, individuals who are needed to fill roles critical to our national security cannot be fully onboarded into their positions.”
The three senators are asking for the Office of Personnel Management to provide information on how long it will take to “complete processing of the backlog of positions that have been approved by Secretary Phelan for employment at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard,” the letter states.
Twenty-four of the new hires are for shipyard police officer positions, according to Bill Webber, president of the American Federation of Government Employees union on Seavey Island.
The yard union represents non-engineer and non-trades employees, including workers in administrative roles, training instructors, travel assistants, shipyard police department officers and secretaries.
“The impact would be huge,” Webber said Monday.
In mid-March, Shaheen announced that the U.S. Department of Defense exempted the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard from the Trump administration’s federal workforce hiring freeze.
The Seacoast Shipyard Association, an advocacy group unaffiliated with the yard’s operations, announced last year Portsmouth Naval Shipyard needs to hire 550 workers annually for the foreseeable future to meet the workload demand. The shipyard is undergoing a federally funded dry dock expansion project now estimated to cost approximately $2 billion.
