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On America’s waterfronts, too many American sailors and naval shipyards are voting with their feet, leaving their jobs and shipyards behind. Without a concerted effort to build functional waterfront communities—well-planned, modern neighborhoods near shipbuilding centers—too many early-career waterfront workers After experiencing a harsh life there, he decides to exercise his own options and withdraw from the business.
Facing massive talent shortages, the challenge for the U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, and maritime industry is to motivate coastal workers to stay on the job and provide them with the camaraderie and teamwork they need to accomplish great missions. It is to build. But a “sticky” route to a strong esprit des corps will not be possible without efforts to both stabilize housing around the waterfront and ease commuting for workers.
Frankly, if a sailor or shipyard employee can’t live close to their workplace or be able to travel from home to work within 20 minutes for whatever reason, their work will suffer.
For the Department of Defense, having sailors and soldiers trapped hours away from their ships and base work areas is a national security threat.
It’s no fun for waterfront workers either. Long hours, followed by increasingly long commutes to and from coasts and bases, are the secret to the monotony of an isolating job.
Tough Navy Briefing on the USS in 2022 George Washington The suicide epidemic shows how modern waterside life can be lonely and bleak without a strong sense of community. It is often forgotten that strong communities are a force multiplier for combatants. For too long, the U.S. government and large corporations operating on the waterfront have pulled out of metropolitan areas and done everything in their power to get out of community-building operations altogether, moving many community-building efforts back to their original regions. I’ve returned it to. Workers as much as possible.
The current rush to secure shipyard housing for seafarers shows that public and private leaders have been slow to recognize the importance of local communities. Senior executives and executives are able to isolate themselves more effectively than ever, often staying out of touch with lower-ranking employees and becoming indifferent to the day-to-day struggles of their employees. Few executives dare to consider local mass transit options, get a good parking spot, or participate in the daily shift-change traffic scrum to get out of the car quickly.
That’s wrong.
Modern technology may have loosened the bonds of historic industries and communities, but traditional fishing villages and quaint port towns still exist for a reason. Even today, no one can do business at sea without solid support from the land-based community.
If waterfront workers don’t have ready access to a safe and stable community, companies can do much to build one. These days, shipyards and some of America’s largest defense companies are able to use a combination of incentives, government stimulus, and strict, well-controlled controls to create sustainable enterprise districts right outside their workplace gates. It is about the same size.
Company cities have a long history. More than a century ago, when rural Germany was beginning to industrialize, Fredrich Krupp, desperate for workers to make steel, cannon, ammunition, and armor plate, turned the Ruhr region into a “business”. It was changed to the town of With the influx of Germans, Krupp companies provided new workers with “medical services, relief funds…pension systems, hospitals, nursing homes.” In addition to low-cost housing colonies, Krupp employees have access to non-profit retail outlets, including a “bakery, wine store, meatpacking plant, hotel, and a charitable foundation for families destitute due to periodic flooding.” We were able to.
During World War II, the four Henry J. Kaiser shipyards in Richmond, California, built 747 ships and launched nearly a quarter of the U.S. Liberty ship fleet. This was a large industrial undertaking, all supported by the City of Richmond. The city center was only a 20-minute walk from the shipyards, so workers lived and played within easy reach of their workplaces. Henry Kaiser added a comprehensive medical system, child care, and housing with funding from the United States Maritime Commission. A series of public-private partnerships established a functional corporate village that still exists today as a complete community with a school, fire station, and police station just outside the shipyard gates.
These seemingly eccentric experiments in mixing corporate interests with citizen interests are still relevant today. If Disney’s balance sheet can justify building 1,400 units of affordable housing for its employees just minutes from its massive Florida-based recreation complex; The U.S. Navy and major naval shipyards, with support from Congress, could: same.
Being close to businesses is not a frivolous perk. Done correctly, it’s a calculated investment in improving workplace performance. Even a run-of-the-mill bare-bones company town with modest apartments and basic, well-equipped facilities can help shipyards and many other large defense industrial bases move forward more efficiently. It will be of great help.
In other words, an attractive region is a way to build engaged business families and produce third- or fourth-generation workers.
That’s how we build a good navy.
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