Saw some discouraging news about the problem the shipbuilders are having with retaining trained workers. Seems that the retention rate of newly trained workers is only 53%. I would say a lot of them simply did not understand just how hard some shipbuilding jobs are. I worked in a shipyard and have seen the work span of some trades. Structural welding is an area in which the career is usually relatively short. It doesn't take long for a guys knees, shoulders and ankles to start giving him trouble after several years of standing, kneeling and scraping on solid steel surfaces.
Keeping workers
- Thread starter oldcodger
- Start date
What does it pay?
4WD
$50 site donor 2025
Yeah, I have worked in the Korean shipyards and the small/fit guys flex into many positions to weld - pull cable - you name it …
Hard to duplicate with an overweight population …
I can completely understand why they leave actually - its likely a big shock to their system.
I grew up working and doing real labor jobs alone and with my dad, etc. Benefit of growing up in the country. Most kids don't these days. My kids did not. Living in a house in the burbs there is only so much real work to do. Even mowing the lawn is like 1 hour a week. Loading the dishwasher and cleaning your room is as hard as it gets for most kids.
So suddenly they need to show up and manual labor all day. Sounds great - until you do it for the first time.
I grew up working and doing real labor jobs alone and with my dad, etc. Benefit of growing up in the country. Most kids don't these days. My kids did not. Living in a house in the burbs there is only so much real work to do. Even mowing the lawn is like 1 hour a week. Loading the dishwasher and cleaning your room is as hard as it gets for most kids.
So suddenly they need to show up and manual labor all day. Sounds great - until you do it for the first time.
Huntington Ingalls Industries' Newport News Shipbuilding location is the largest private shipyard in the country. NNS is the only U.S. shipyard capable of building, refueling and decommissioning nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines for the U.S. Navy. The workforce includes hundreds of welders and the shipyard operates a Welding School around the clock since attrition is an ongoing battle. Welding is not a profession for the weak, timid or those who lack motivation and perseverance. The salary chart below comes from Talent.com and is current.
4WD
$50 site donor 2025
I think the military might be a good source considering some don’t want to do 20 years - geez - an ex Navy shipbuilder?
4WD
$50 site donor 2025
We have a pipeline coming through where most welders own their rig (350/3500) and the license plates are maybe 60% Texas if I had to guess - so I bet expenses are paid …
edyvw
$50 site donor 2025
4WD
$50 site donor 2025
I’m aware - in automated heavy industry - these guys get jobs on the controls side of the equipment - not the heavy machinery itself …
But that’s fine bcs most downtime is control side.
But some of them have 10 years and are more mature …
(Sounds like today’s vehicles
)Comes down to pay/schedule …
I agree with you SC Maintenance. I was raised on a farm and my dad was a carpenter. Hard work was the name of the game. I imagine the training is not too bad but when they enter the production it is a different world and a shock to their system.
Nukeman7 you bring up something that I have a hard time understanding. The navy has a serious problem with facilities necessary to keep submarines and carriers mission capable. Ingalls shipbuilding in Pascagoula built a drydock and a submarine overhaul/refueling facility in the 1970s. I think it only lasted about 8 or 9 years and Ingalls closed the program down. The navy sure would be better off if they had kept that facility operating.
I did so much labor and saw so many injuries. And workers in their 40's who looked like 60's, or whatever. Chainsaw accidents are not pretty... Machinists who can no longer count to 10...
My desk job was not work; it was a big fat nothing. People used to tell me, "Yeah, but you work with your mind, and the stress. That's hard work too." I could only laugh at their innocence...
ls1mike
$50 Site Donor 2025
Four of my kid's friends and my kid took jobs at Trident Refit Facility. They like it.
Last edited:
Some blue collar jobs are very demanding and wear out a person’s body quickly.
Good money can be made in the trades.
I worked with a guy who was in the Navy in WWII and was a welder in a shipyard. His eyes were really bad. Not enough protection in those face shields back then. He was a little guy that could get in those tight places. Hard working man in spite of his poor eyesight.
It's all about the money. If you can get an easier job that pays the same or more you are going to go for it. I have no idea how hard shipbuilding is but I would probably say it's about the same as working in any factory which requires lots of physical work. People in today's world seem to like an air conditioner blowing on their back in the summertime and a nice heated environment in the wintertime. You spend so many hours per week working you might as well enjoy it.
The comment about needing small people is spot on. Small shoulders in particular. I haven't worked to build new ships, only to rebuild decades-old ones that were designed with a slide rule, not CAD. Factory work has ergonomics designed in the worker's favor-- this is rarely true shipboard.
I've climbed a multiple story ballast tank only to wiggle my upper body through little man holes up top. Then I had to wiggle backwards until my feet landed on the staging plank, blind. I've laid on my back on a bunch of studs poking out of the bilge with only a cushion of pig mats so I could change the rubber mounts of giant crushing objects from below. It's good work-- the boss knows what I was up to and when he sees my 1000 yard stare in the break room, he leaves me alone and gives me a gravy job the next day to recover.
I've climbed a multiple story ballast tank only to wiggle my upper body through little man holes up top. Then I had to wiggle backwards until my feet landed on the staging plank, blind. I've laid on my back on a bunch of studs poking out of the bilge with only a cushion of pig mats so I could change the rubber mounts of giant crushing objects from below. It's good work-- the boss knows what I was up to and when he sees my 1000 yard stare in the break room, he leaves me alone and gives me a gravy job the next day to recover.
My first job was at 13 working with a friend's father paving. OSHA? Child labor laws? No one cared. Payed me cash to walk next to the paving machine and throw shovels of asphalt and tamp edges. What did I learn during this summer job? It sucked! Everyone there by 45 looked like they were 65. Most spent every night drinking at the VFW. No one liked what they were doing and they were there because they had no other options. It taught me one of the most important lessons in my life - I didn't want to live my life that way. As far as ship building and manual labor jobs, many did it because they had to do it, not because they wanted to do it, and if given an option to not do it, they'll take that option, especially if it's less physically taxing and pays better.
The fact is other countries have large populations with no other choices than this type of labor and that's quite an incentive to continue doing something you don't really like doing. Heck, there's an entire population of people in the US, who weren't born in the US, who tend to do jobs no one else wants because they too don't have any other options.
The fact is other countries have large populations with no other choices than this type of labor and that's quite an incentive to continue doing something you don't really like doing. Heck, there's an entire population of people in the US, who weren't born in the US, who tend to do jobs no one else wants because they too don't have any other options.
Last edited:
My kids all get jobs as soon as they are old enough. These have mostly been service jobs in restaurants and I think they are beneficial in teaching them how to deal with the general public. My oldest worked grounds crew for a golf course last summer and his assessment was it sucked. It was hot, it was boring, it was repetitive, he learned a little about maintaining grass and equipment, but it paid well and work started at 6am and was over by 2PM, and he had the rest of the day to whatever he wanted. He said there were crewman in their 30s and 40s who work there year around and all they did was complain about the work while all the summer workers just did the job knowing this wasn't going to be their lives for long.
Welder in a shipyard is easily able to make six figures.
In trade school, you learned to weld standing at a bench. It seems pretty easy, and it’s kind of cool.
When building a ship, you’re crawling into a space, on your back, or hunched over, or on your knees, and welding a fitting inside of confined spaces like fuel tanks, voids, machinery rooms.
It’s not the welding that’s hard, it’s the position from which you do the welding.
But the pay is good. Really good.
