Navy Yard

Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware legislators huddled on Capitol Hill yesterday to begin mapping strategy for the battle to keep the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and Naval Base open. The brief meeting ended with the lawmakers, four of the six U.S. senators from the tri-state region and a half-dozen House members, insisting the installation could be spared on merit, while boasting they also had the political muscle to prevail. "The chances are much better than ever of saving the Navy Yard," said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del.

THE NAVAL Yard a/k/a Urban Outfitter campus is where the young cosmopolitan designers, graphic artists and marketers come to work in the world of style. Here at the creative edge of the city, gals dress for show even if they are just meeting at the company cafeteria for lunch. You'll see an eclectic mix of patterns, heel heights, and outerwear. And the guys aren't slacking, either, going from American heritage style to vintage Levis and Allen Edmonds shoes. Who knew such style could be found on the banks of the Delaware River?

Imagine suburbanites coming into Philadelphia to beat the wage tax. Bizzaroland? No, Fumoland. State Sen. Vincent Fumo, D-Phila., and City Councilman James Kenney are researching a plan to convert the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard into an enterprise zone where workers would pay a lower wage tax than either city dwellers or commuters now pay. "I've always said the two biggest problems in Philadelphia are a lack of leadership and the wage...

The Hoboken Shipyards of Hoboken, N.J., has asked the General Accounting Office to review a contract awarded to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard for the overhaul of the Clifton Sprague, a Navy reserve frigate. On Friday, the North Jersey shipyard requested that the GAO determine whether the $4.45 million contract won by the Philadelphia yard included the same costs that the Hoboken yard was required by the Navy to include in its $5.4 million bid. Among them were the cost of lodging and feeding the 220 seamen now on the vessel and the amount of overhead allocated by the Navy to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.

First it was electronics, then automobiles, and now the Japanese have arrived to teach the Navy how to repair ships more efficiently. Consultants from Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries, one of Japan's largest shipbuilding firms, are on the job at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, developing a management system for a section of the $815 million overhaul of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk. Pentagon and Navy officials said they sought no competitive bids for the $4 million contract because no other country can match Japan's mangement expertise for complex and long-range ship repair and construction projects.

It is not a mere detail nor is it a quibble whether the prospective new jobs at the Naval Shipyard go to a representatively diverse selection of Philadelphians and other area residents. Certain City Council members are being criticized for asking questions about provisions for equitable hiring practices before Council signs off on massive public subsidies for aspects of the revitalization project under its control. Hmmph. It may be time for a reality check. There has been a long history of discrimination by skilled trade and craft unions, from which people who weren't white guys were excluded, especially when it came to jobs involving the highest skills and pay. So while it is right that the target employment pool for the new shipyard be workers displaced when it ceased to be a Defense Department facility, it also should be a matter of public policy and priority that historic inequities not be re-institutionalized under private ownership.

There is good and bad news for Navy facilities in Philadelphia. The good news is that the city's second-largest employer - the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard - will remain afloat. The bad news is that Navy Secretary John Lehman Jr. personally recommended the shutdown of the 115-bed Navy Hospital, which he described as "obsolete" and "non-cost-effective. " At a news conference yesterday on the flight deck of the USS Independence, now undergoing an overhaul at the yard, Lehman for the first time admitted that he was behind the move to close the adjacent 50-year-old hospital.

"Trust everybody, but cut the cards" could have been James Madison's line. After all, that would be a fair summary of why the principal author of the U.S. Constitution set up the elaborate system of checks and balances intrinsic to this nation's government and mirrored in our state Constitution and city charter. It seems fair to wonder whether Mayor Rendell skipped even the Cliffs Notes on the Federalist Papers. How else could he express so much umbrage because a majority of City Council wants to see the actual documents on the proposed Kvaerner deal at the Naval Shipyard before signing off on the piece of the financing that requires its approval?

In the 185 years that Navy ships have been built and repaired in Philadelphia, the work has been done for one reason only: because the Navy ordered it. But with 3,000 jobs tentatively slated to be cut at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, the yard's commander said yesterday that it is crucial to the yard's survival that it become adept at getting work in a different way entirely - by bidding on it, like a private company. Capt. William A. Kerr said that an internal memo sent to the shipyard Thursday demonstrates the Navy's intention to guarantee less work for the shipyard in years ahead, and that the only way to keep employment levels near the current 9,200 will be to bid competitively for work.

Maintaining a strong and viable Philadelphia Naval Shipyard must be foremost in the minds of local and regional public officials. The shipyard's contribution to the health of our local economy is, without question, substantial. Recently, however, the shipyard and the workers who keep it going have been under a constant barrage from the Reagan administration and its philosophy of the superiority of the private sector, from members of Congress and from some naval officials. It is essential to the national defense that there be a ready supply of trained labor, able to service and maintain the fleet should an emergency arise.