http://www.sunjournal.com/projects/stories/20050320143.php
By Carol Coultas, Business Writer, Sunday, March 20,2005
Keith Delcambre plunked a 5-pound bag of shrimp on a table as he barked the order to the crew boiling up crawfish in the back room of Bozo's Seafood Market.
The shrimp are a special order, so they'll cook in one of the small pots reserved for corn and potatoes. The large tanks are only for crawfish - the main attraction at Bozo's, where the Delcambre family has been feeding folks in Pascagoula, Miss., for three generations.
Delcambre wipes his brow. It's hot in the back room. The tanks bubble with cayenne-colored water, flavored with a concoction of Chinese red pepper, lemon, celery, grapefruit, garlic and oil.
Two hundred pounds of crawfish - "mudbugs" in the vernacular of the bayou - will go into the bath, boil for 10 minutes, soak for six and then get shoveled onto trays for customers waiting out front.
Most of those customers work at Ingalls shipyard, the behemoth facility perched on the edge of the Mississippi Sound that makes ships for the U.S. Navy.
Six years ago, a three-week strike at the yard brought business at Bozo's nearly to a standstill. Now, there's a more ominous threat.
In an effort to save money, the Navy is considering having all of its new destroyers made at one shipyard: either Ingalls, or its northern counterpart, Maine's Bath Iron Works.
The decision could mean massive layoffs, or worse, at both yards.
Delcambre has heard the talk. He wipes his brow again.
"We can't afford to lose nothing here," he said of the prospect. "We're struggling as it is. Without Ingalls, well, you can just hang it up."
Water ways
Pascagoula gets its name from the Indian tribe that inhabited the area and, according to legend, committed mass suicide by drowning in the river rather than surrender to an attacking Biloxi tribe. Locals say that in late summer and autumn you can hear a sound like swarming bees coming from the river, the recurring strains of the death chant the Indians sang as they waded into the water.
The river, also named Pascagoula, splits a portion of the city from the rest, forming a spit of land on the west side that's home to Ingalls shipyard, the Port of Pascagoula and the Pascagoula Naval Base. To the east is a jumble of mostly working-class neighborhoods softened by huge live oaks draped in Spanish moss where singer Jimmy Buffet spent his childhood. The ubiquitous retail strip on the outskirts of town offers residents the standard fare from Wal-Mart, Office Max and Lowe's. In the city center is a downtown bearing the scars of retailers who've left and some misguided attempts at urban renewal in the '70s.
A long stretch of lovely old Southern houses forms the southern border of the city - coastal homes to the likes of hometown boy and U.S. Senator Trent Lott, writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and "The Insider" anti-tobacco industry attorney Dickie Scruggs. At the southeast corner of the city is a Chevron refinery.
>From the water, the city's borders begin and end with industry.
Economic hub
Ingalls - BIW's sometime competitor, sometime collaborator - is at the heart of that industry. More than 12,000 people work at the shipyard, making it the largest private employer in the state. The next largest employs only 3,000 people.
Of those 12,000, about 1,500 are represented by IBEW 733, the electricians union that is a first cousin to the machinists union that represents about 4,000 of the 6,200 workers at BIW.
Jim Couch is the newly elected business manager for the local; Louis Bond, the business rep. Between them they have 60 years at Ingalls.
Back in the '70s the yard employed more than 25,000 people. Since then, Couch and Bond have seen the yard's owners change twice, and have weathered lay-offs, slumps and strikes. But the thought of losing work on the next generation of destroyers - called DD(X) - has them worried.
Smaller, cheaper and more high-tech than the current class of destroyer, the DD(X) is the yard's meal ticket. The Navy has modified its plan for the number of futuristic warships from 24 ships in 2003 to just five today.
Already 1,500 people have been laid off at Ingalls because there's no new project to roll them on to. Without steady work, it's hard to maintain a steady workforce.
"We run the risk of losing our skilled labor force without the DD(X)," said Couch.
The yard works in cooperation with local schools to train future shipbuilders in an apprentice program that's been successful. Each year they accept 50 trainees; this year they had 300 applications for the positions.
But getting skilled labor off the street to meet the fluctuating shipbuilding schedule is tough.
"It ranks up there with crab fishermen," said Bond of shipbuilding. "It's hard and dangerous work."
The yard has been able to keep people working with the variety of ships they build for the Navy. Unlike BIW - which almost exclusively builds destroyers - Ingalls builds destroyers, amphibious assault ships and cutters for the Coast Guard. Ingalls' parent company, Northrop Grumman, has another shipyard nearby in Avondale, Louisiana, and a small facility in Gulfport, Miss., allowing for the easy transfer of work crews and, occasionally, the ships themselves.
The variety of projects has allowed the shipyard to roll crews from one project to the next. Docked at the yard now are three destroyers and two amphibious ships, great gray hulls that promise work for the next two to three years. A dummy DD(X) is being tested in California, the result of Ingalls winning the contract to design the new destroyer.
Whether they will actually make the DD(X) is a decision that lies in Washington, D.C. The Navy said it expects to save $300 million per ship if the work is consolidated at one yard. Since the 1980s, the destroyer work has been split between Ingalls and BIW.
Whomever wins the contract, wins job security. The contract provides not just the construction work, but all subsequent maintenance, modifications and overhaul work as well.
No one knows when to expect the Navy's decision. Yet most workers are generally unaware or unconcerned about the DD(X) threat, said Couch.
"People are banking on the fact that Ingalls has always provided work," he said. "It hasn't hit home if we lose, we're going out of business."
He might be overstating the impact, but not his fear.
A warm reception
Two of the three ceiling fans spin lazily in the lobby of Pascagoula City Hall. At one corner of the sunny lobby is a cardboard cut-out of President Bush; in the center, a reception desk.
Sitting behind the desk is Sarah-Jim Boykin, a perfectly coifed and bejeweled woman you wouldn't dream of sassin'. A two-time mayor and city councilor, Boykin knows a thing or two about the city that's been her home since she was 9.
She describes Pascagoula as an unpretentious place, full of good people who fill their days with work, family and church. The local Chamber of Commerce lists 21 area churches, eight are Baptist.
Growing up, she and her family and friends would spend the weekends sailing out of the Mississippi Sound to the barrier islands that separate Pascagoula from the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. They'd bring catfish, shrimp, crawfish and whatever else to make a picnic feast for themselves.
Today, fewer people seek the water for recreation, lured in part by the casinos that beckon from Biloxi about 20 miles to the west. Jackson County, where Pascagoula is seated, considered legalizing casinos a few years back, but it was defeated. The vote came as no surprise to Boykin.
"The casinos would have brought in a lot of undesirables," she said, threatening the city's quality of life.
Over the course of the day, Boykin greets dozens of visitors as they tend to their business at City Hall. She rarely hears regular people talk about the threat at the shipyard, although it weighs heavily on local officials' minds.
"When there was the possibility of the naval base closing, it was the talk of the town," she said. "But people aren't talking about the DD(X)."
Staying afloat
Unfortunately for this town, there's talk again of the Navy base closing. Given the pending DD(X) decision, Joe Cole calls it a "double whammy" that could spell disaster for Pascagoula.
As mayor, Cole keeps the welfare of the city's 26,000 residents at the forefront. In his private life, Cole has climbed the ranks of Ingalls to the position of vice president. But when he speaks publicly of the DD(X) program, it is solely as mayor.
"I don't think it's all about survivability, in the case of Northrop Grumman's facility, as it is about viability," he said.
The yard needs a certain amount of work to support its infrastructure and for the corporation to reinvest in the facility, he said. Without it, the city faces the loss of thousands of jobs.
There have already been two recent employment hits. The area lost an International Paper bleached board mill in 2001 that idled 375 workers. The same year, Rohm and Haas chemical plant closed, leaving nearly 400 employees without work. And the fishing and shrimp industry continues to decline because of foreign imports.
But Cole said people are "cautiously optimistic." Congressional delegations from both Maine and Mississippi are working hard to convince Washington to continue splitting work on the destroyer program.
And there's already been some reinvestment by Northrop Grumman. Last year, the state of Mississippi anted up more than $50 million to match a comparable amount from NG to upgrade and expand the yard to work on the Coast Guard's Deep Water program. NG also put money into its Gulfport facility where work is under way on composite materials for shipbuilding. A separate division of NG announced plans to build parts for a new breed of military aircraft called Global Hawks at a proposed aviation industrial park at Trent Lott International Airport in nearby Moss Point.
The investments give Cole hope, a feeling he sees reflected in his constituents.
"Average citizens put their trust in elected officials, private business leaders and Northrop Grumman to work the issues," he said.
It's an observation shared by Dick Dixon Jr., a native whose father worked at the yard for more than 40 years. Dixon himself is a relative newcomer to the yard, working as a purchaser for the last two years.
Political speculation is a Pascagoula pastime, he said, noting that lots of people at Ingalls think they lost the contract for a Navy transport carrier in 1996 because of the red/blue divide. Louisiana voted for Clinton; Mississippi didn't. Avondale, in Louisiana, won the contract.
The conventional wisdom says political muscle stands in Mississippi's favor this time. Republican powerhouse Trent Lott is still revered locally, and despite his resignation as Senate majority leader, the people of Pascagoula are pinning their hopes on him.
"He's always come through for them," said Dixon.
Back at Bozo's, Delcambre wishes there was more than blind faith working for them.
"People around here think if you don't talk about it, it'll go away," he said shaking his head. "I wish that was all it took."
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