Ingalls Shipyard to Layoff 500

Sometimes good news is just good news. Other times the good news comes with bad news just to make it doubly ironic. Today the irony shot is coming to the Ingalls Shipyard. The good news is that union workers at the Ingalls Shipyard are getting a nice pay raise that will enable them to have a higher standard of living. The workers who are not part of the union however are going to be significantly reduced in their number.

That is right the Ingalls Shipyard is getting ready to let go of about 500 of the non-union members of their staff. The two sites that the staff will be cut from are Pascagoula and Gulfport, MS.

Before the layoffs were announced the company tried to instate a voluntary layoff program. As you can imagine not many of the workers have chosen to be out of a job without the any real protections in a long-term bad job market. The company did not have enough volunteers to stave of the layoffs. Apparently, they are still trying.

“What I understand, is they’re going to ask for volunteering; people who are looking to either retire early or to move to a different job somewhere else. I think that it’s that particular cycle in their business and the company has to do it and we don’t like it,” said Jackson County Supervisor Mike Mangum told a local reporter.

The layoffs are expected to come by the end of 2012, though they have not given too many specifics about when exactly the layoffs will happen. There is some speculation about who will get the ax and who will get to stay in their jobs for the time being.

“I assume, these being non union workers, that it’s going to be draftsmen, engineers, people working in offices and that type stuff,” said Jackson County Supervisor John McKay told a local reporter. “It seems those types of people always get picked on first for some reason.” It is important to remember that at the current moment there has been no official announcement from the company about which positions will be cut or which workers will be out a job.

Ingalls Shipyard is blaming the layoffs on increased costs and declining budgets that are putting the company under a finical strain. The company had the following to say about the layoffs in an official statement, “We must reduce our indirect budgets to remain competitive in an increasingly challenging marketplace. This is an unfortunate but necessary step in order to meet these financial objectives.”

Though the workers who are losing their jobs are unlikely to be comforted by the fact that the company finds have to get rid of their primary source of income as unfortunate it is unlikely to stop the layoffs from happening.

These layoffs are also likely to have an impact on local businesses, as the decrease of 500 paychecks will be felt because fewer people will be able to spend because they lack discretionary spending.