U.S. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, and U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine 1st District, are joining New Hampshire officials in urging the Trump administration to withdraw a proposed rule that would weaken longstanding civil service protections for federal employees, including the nearly 8,000 civilian workers at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery.
King is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
In a letter to the Office of Personnel Management and the Merit Systems Protection Board, lawmakers warned the proposal, “Promoting Employee Accountability,” would make it more difficult to recruit and retain the skilled civilian workforce responsible for maintaining the Navy’s submarine fleet, ultimately threatening national security.
“By stripping away the procedures that keep discipline fair for civilian employees doing the work of naval readiness,” the lawmakers wrote, “the proposed rule introduces costly unpredictability in the workforce and needlessly undermines readiness. We are concerned this will increase attrition in the critical and experienced workforce that keeps our submarine fleet ready.”
Lawmakers noted that the shipyard’s annual economic impact in surrounding communities totals over $1.5 billion.
The shipyard needs to hire more than 700 workers annually to meet the Navy’s demand, lawmakers contend, which is an increase from 550 over the past two years.
“Due to civilian hiring quotas imposed by the Office of Personnel Management,” the letter concludes, “PNSY has struggled to onboard workers and cannot risk additional delays or departures. If the administration intends to retain this political litmus test at our public shipyards, the costs of unnecessarily losing more skilled workers through this proposed rule far outweigh any potential benefit.”
