Skilled Workers

Scott Gordon, founder of Mastery Charter Schools, did not start out as an educator. Gordon, 45, a Phi Beta Kappa economics major at the State University of New York at Binghamton who earned a master's in business administration from Yale University's School of Management, got involved with schools in response to the need he saw in business for educated workers who could work cooperatively. An executive who used to oversee development of cereals for General Foods Corp. in White Plains, N.Y., and once supervised the marketing strategies for Grape-Nuts, Gordon founded a worker-owned home health company in Philadelphia.

Raytheon Engineers & Constructors dumped a bit of coal in the city's Christmas stocking yesterday. It announced plans to combine branches in Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York into a single location at the Carnegie Center in Princeton, N.J. That means 1,000 of the 1,250 workers at Raytheon's Center City office will either be relocated, be hired in some other capacity or lose their jobs. The remaining 250 workers will stay in Philadelphia and will continue to serve the company's pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients.

The aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy, overhauled here in the mid-1990s as the final task of the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, is returning to the city for long-term storage. Generally, the public is not allowed aboard vessels at the inactive-fleet facility, part of the former Navy Base on the Delaware River. With its 4.6-acre flight deck, the Kennedy would be a visible landmark for planes landing at Philadelphia International Airport and boaters on the river. Lt. Clay Doss, a Navy spokesman, would confirm only that the Kennedy, also known as CV67, would be towed here for "safe storage" pending a decision on its future.

Defense Secretary Les Aspin yesterday announced 2,500 layoffs at four Navy shipyards - but he spared the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, where rumors have circulated for months that as many as 1,300 workers were about to be let go. The 2,500 will be let go in the next four months, but no layoffs can occur here before Oct. 1, the Pentagon said. This probably spares the shipyard workers from layoffs until 1995, when the overhaul of the aircraft carrier Kennedy is scheduled for completion.

The area's need for skilled workers could be alleviated if low-income Philadelphians received the training and other help they needed to work for growth companies in the suburbs, a report issued yesterday said. The report, "Workforce 2000," was issued by the Regional Workforce Partnership, a new consortium of 45 area businesses, community groups and colleges, and it is a platform to track future job-placement success. "There's a geographic mismatch of jobs and people," said David Thornburgh, executive director of the Pennsylvania Economy League, which prepared the report.

For four months, William Jones has spent his days in an Ogontz school learning to become a machinist, and his nights behind a cash register at a suburban Strawbridge's. Even with free tuition, a $1,500 monthly stipend and the $7-an-hour job, he is barely making enough to support his family of five. But just when the 42-year-old finally could see a life beyond part-time, low-wage work, he may have to blink. The state-funded stipend helping him "just get by" runs out in January. Without it, he and dozens of his classmates may have no choice but to give up trying to get ahead.

ART GROUP SPEAKS About a dozen members of a group called Art Emergency Coalition asked the directors of the Pennsylvania Convention Center yesterday to explain how $2 million budgeted for art in the building was to be spent and urged them to make the decisions "open and democratic. " Coalition members have been critical of the board's decision to hire a consultant from Florida to help locate artists, and at least some want preference guaranteed for Philadelphia artists. Board chairman Willard Rouse said the authority would respond to the group's written questions within days and would soon schedule a meeting between board members and the coalition.

They came in the sateen of union jackets and the cotton of rock T-shirts, in baseball caps and leather coats. They were South Philly guys from down the block, and northlanders who drove eight hours through snow from Toronto. They were single with nothing left to lose. And married with family future on the line. They were chasing a pipefitter's dream: trip to St. Croix, all expenses paid, a stay for six to eight months. A job. So what if they would have to pull up stakes, leave family behind, eat cafeteria food and live in a dorm?

With an urgent need for 400 skilled workers and a long-term need for many more, the Kvaerner Philadelphia Shipyard is seeking strong ties with area colleges and universities. This week, for example, the yard invited 10 academic leaders to lunch. Over sandwiches, they studied diagrams of the new high-tech yard, now building its first ship, and learned how the yard's European technology differs from U.S. manufacturing techniques. Then they donned red hard hats, saw the yard in action, and heard more about Kvaerner's hopes for them to play a role in reviving the region's once-vibrant shipbuilding industry.

When Frank Leach heard the discouraging word yesterday, he summoned up a well-worn sense of humor and handed his 7-year-old nephew, Naji, a job application for Pennsylvania Shipbuilding Co., the firm whose spokesman had just dashed the hopes of 130 unemployed Chester residents looking for work. "By the time he gets to be 18," said Leach, his hands resting on the boy's thin shoulders, "he might be able to put his foot in the door. " Leach, 35, an out-of-work welder, voiced the bitterness of those to whom the scenario has become all too familiar: There are jobs for trained workers, but there is little job training.