The Fight For Future Maritime Workers

President Donald Trump released a presidential memorandum on August 13 meant to boost shipbuilding. Its main focus is to address what everyone acknowledges are long-standing issues with naval procurement and build schedules. Its desire is to speed up naval vessel procurement and reduce delays and expenses.

Among its action items are expanding the “Finland model” of partly building U.S. naval vessels in Finland and finishing them here, while simultaneously building a new shipyard in the United States.

The memorandum, titled “Rebuilding the United States Navy and America’s Shipbuilding Industrial Base,” seeks to open a fifth naval shipyard with “sufficient drydock capacity to service the planned growth of the fast attack submarine fleet over the next two decades; locations proximate to the United States Pacific Fleet, including in the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and the United States territories; site options that include up to three new drydocks designed and built to hold the ranges of every current and projected class of submarine; innovative financing mechanisms such as public-private partnerships; and timelines and resourcing requirements.” We applaud adding capacity to U.S. shipbuilding, but we think special attention will be needed to address workforce development.

Supporting action items direct various entities to “hire and train an American citizen workforce” and “source a United States supply chain for construction and maintenance of all ships at the United States shipyards.”

Where is this workforce supposed to come from? It cannot be conjured into being by an executive order — not even one that gives federal agencies 90-day or 120-day windows to develop plans. Developing a skilled workforce is a slow and expensive process, especially for a sector that has been in need for decades. It’s a generational commitment that requires generational resources and sustained budgetary resolve across public agencies and private companies alike.

Assuming these initiatives take place, the same limited pool of skilled workers would be competing for jobs building ships and expanding supply chains in maritime-related industries. For those young workers who train, qualify and persist in their interest, the future may be bright, but the labor chokepoint promises to be a real constraint on all the things that shipping boosters want to do for years to come.

School counselors have only recently become aware of the opportunities in maritime, as we reported in a recent article. We are only at the beginning of this combined effort to develop and train an expanded maritime workforce. This effort — not the budgetary requirements, not the technology — may be the single most important and challenging part of efforts to revitalize shipbuilding and maritime.