By Steve Klamkin WPRO News
Electric Boat says it will hire more than 5,600 submarine builders in 2023 and 2024 in Rhode Island and Connecticut as it builds 17 more Virginia-class attack submarines and continues toward building 12 Columbia-class missile submarines.
At its annual legislative briefing in Warwick on Monday, Electric Boat President Kevin Graney said the company held some 400 hiring events in 2022, and will continue its partnerships with colleges and universities to train welders and other boat-building personnel from the two states.
“We’re going to continue an aggressive hiring strategy through 2023 and … it will be for quite a few years ahead,” Graney said.
“Seventeen, 18-year old young people coming in… within two or three years, if they’re good performers, they could be supervisors in this environment because we’re growing as fast as we are,” Graney said.
He added that of the company’s current workforce of 20,000 people, 62% live in Connecticut, 32% in Rhode Island. He said that 17% of EB’s workforce are people of color, 16% are women.
The briefing included an audience of Governor Dan McKee and all four members of the federal legislative delegation, including Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, and Congressmen David Cicilline and Seth Magaziner, all Democrats. All five men welcomed the company’s hiring plans and outreach efforts to bolster its workforce.
Graney also outlined how the growth of the submarine fleet dovetails with the burgeoning threat from China and Russia.
“Everyone who’s seen the news of late knows we’ve seen an emergent China and Russia, and we are facing near-peer threats from both of these nations, and those threats really constitute why Electric Boat’s platforms and our services are and will continue to be in high demand,” he said.
Senator Jack Reed, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has long championed Electric Boat and the submarines that the company builds.
“Without them, we would be severely disadvantaged in the Pacific, and similarly in Europe, they are critical,” Reed said.
