Like many Maine employers, Bath Iron Works has a need for new recruits.
Only, in this case, the General Dynamics shipyard has more than 6,000 employees and an ongoing need for new workers.
Enter the Maine Community College System.
A range of training programs has been established to train workers for the Bath shipyard.
As an added bonus, much of the programming comes at no cost to the people being trained.
“This free training program has proven itself to be extremely effective at giving people the foundational skills they need to take on challenging and rewarding careers in shipbuilding,” says Tom Stevens, director of training at Bath Iron Works. “It’s great to see it expand to another part of the state so people in central Maine can more easily access this opportunity.”
Lucrative careers
The success of Southern Maine Community College’s Manufacturing Technician Training program — which has had more than 100 classes — led to an expansion to Central Maine Community College, which is in Auburn.
Graduates of the free, three-week Manufacturing Technician Training course are guaranteed an interview with Bath Iron Works. Many go on to lucrative careers at the shipyard or at other manufacturers.
In the case of BIW, hundreds of SMCC graduates are now on the payroll at the shipyard, building Navy ships.
Now, with Central Maine Community College, the program is growing. The Auburn campus is about 32 miles from the Bath shipyard.
Early success
So far this year, CMCC has graduated 29 people from its program. Of those, 22 received job offers.
One element of the program that makes it so successful is that BIW pays a $500 per week stipend, receivable after graduation, to help offset living expenses while the student attends classes full time.
“I think it’s a great step to see if you want to apply yourself in the trades,” says Joshua Grant, a course graduate now working as a pipefitter on the future USS Quentin Walsh (DDG 132). “So far, I’m loving it. I’m still brand new but I’m learning more and more.”
A 2024 graduate of Edward Little High School in Auburn, Grant had been working in a grocery store before he enrolled in the CMCC class.
The class covers shop and workplace safety, technical math and measurement, blueprint reading, hand and power tools, material handling, plasma cutting, tack welding, drilling and fabrication as well as resume building and interview skills.
Bath Iron Works has under construction the Flight IIA Arleigh Burke-class destroyer Patrick Gallagher (DDG 127) as well as the Flight III destroyers Louis H. Wilson Jr. (DDG 126), William Charette (DDG 130), Quentin Walsh (DDG 132), John E. Kilmer (DDG 134), Richard G. Lugar (DDG 136) and J. William Middendorf (DDG 138).
Plywood plant expected to create 95 jobs
A Chicago businessman, Charlie Martin, has been working for the past several years to reestablish a plywood factory in the Somerset County town of Bingham.
He trucked in industrial plywood-manufacturing equipment from Canada and bought surplus boilers from the old B&M Baked Bean factory.
But, until just recently, he was running into challenges raising capital to finance the operation.
He may have turned the corner with a recent loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s rural development program.
Maine Plywood USA, as the Bingham operation will be known, receives $11.9 million through the USDA program.
The factory — which will be in a former plywood production site — is expected to employ up to 95 people.
“This investment reflects the USDA’s and Trump Administration’s commitment to investing in our natural resource industries in rural America. In Maine, the forest products industry has a long tradition of strengthening our local economies. This support for a Maine timber business is anticipated to create economic prosperity and jobs in rural Maine,” says John Butera, state director of USDA Rural Development Maine.
The financing is earmarked for construction, renovation, equipment purchase, refinancing debt, inventory and working capital costs associated with converting an existing sawmill and wood manufacturing facility into a plywood underlayment facility in Bingham.
The facility is anticipated to produce 2.5 million sheets of plywood underlayment in the first full year of stabilized operations. The funding, which includes two loans of $5.9 million and $6 million through the Timber Production and Expansion Guaranteed Loan Program, will be supplemented with owner and investor equity of $2.2 million.
New law could help manufacturers
Maine lawmakers have advanced LD 191, “An Act to Support Maine Businesses by Establishing a Pass-through Entity Tax and Tax Credit,” by incorporating it into the Supplemental Budget, LD 2212.
The legislation establishes an optional pass-through entity tax, a framework for eligible partnerships and S corporations, according to the Manufacturers Association of Maine, which backed the law.
The policy gives eligible pass-through entities access to a tax planning tool already available in most other states and helps strengthen Maine’s competitiveness for employers operating across state lines.
For manufacturers, it’s expected to allow more capital to be directed toward hiring, training and investment in equipment.
“By adopting this policy, Maine strengthens its competitiveness and supports employers investing in our state’s future,” says John Lewis, executive director of the Manufacturers Association of Maine.
