In a recent interview, Hugh Hewitt asked President elect Donald Trump what he is going to do to build up the Navy’s fleet. Trump responded:

“We need ships. We have to get ships. And you know, everybody said oh, we’ll build them. We may have to go to others, bid them out, and it’s okay to do that. We’ll bid them out until we get ourselves ready. We’re not prepared for ships.”¹

Trump does not have confidence in BIW’s ability to meet the Navy’s demand. He suggested outsourcing American shipbuilders’ jobs to other countries instead. The IAM’s International President Brian Bryant is a pipefitter from BIW. Bryant issued the following statement:

“As International President of the 600,000-member International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) and a former pipefitter at Bath Iron Works (BIW), I express deep concern about any discussion to outsource Navy shipbuilding to foreign nations.

“We know that American workers and domestic shipyards have the talent and capacity to meet our national defense needs if given proper investment and support.

“The incoming administration must prioritize rebuilding the U.S. industrial base by addressing the skilled labor shortages and backlog in shipyards, not by turning to foreign builders and suppliers.

“A strong domestic shipbuilding industry is essential to economic and national security in an era of increasing geopolitical tensions. Maine shipbuilders have been at the forefront of innovation and excellence for over 400 years, consistently delivering vessels that meet the rigorous standards of the U.S. Navy.

“Our nation’s security and economy depend on a strong domestic shipbuilding industry, and IAM members stand ready to build the ships America needs.

“We look forward to engaging with the new administration to help strengthen American shipbuilding and secure our defense industrial base here at home.”²

There were signs Trump wanted to outsource your jobs long before his interview with Hewitt. The Shipbuilders Council of America is a business association representing the United States shipyard industry.³ Last August, its President Matthew Paxton wrote an article for Breaking Defense. Paxton questioned why the United States would ever consider outsourcing its sovereignty:

“Some of our allies took the outsourcing path, and now are desperately trying to rebuild the industrial base back to what it once was — but they have lost the technical expertise, the infrastructure, and most importantly, the craftsmen to make it a reality. As a nation, why would we ever entertain this idea when we can see what it has done to our allies?”⁴

Many shipbuilders voted for Trump anyway. Many were single issue voters. They supported Trump for his “immigration policies” but missed Trump killing the bipartisan border bill.⁵ Trump was more interested in campaigning on the border than closing it. This became clear when he took Elon Musk’s side in the H-1B debate. MAGA is right about H-1B visas. Employers exploit the program. Corporations fire American workers for immigrant labor, treating them like indentured servants. People’s World reported, “Amazon… ranked first for a number of years… in terms of both new H-1B workers and layoffs.”⁶ People’s World also provided:

“A[nother] glaring example of the exploitative nature of the H-1B visa program was seen in 2015, when 250 Disney workers were told that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to migrants on temporary visas for ‘highly skilled technical workers,’ or the H-1B visa. Over the next three months, some Disney workers were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had just lost.”⁷

In 2015, the New York Times quoted a former Disney employee:

“I just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly. It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job. I still can’t grasp it.”⁸

What corporations have grasped is the power H-1B visas give them over the workplace. Any American who works for a living should oppose abusive programs like H-1B. But greedy corporations are the problem, not the people they victimize.

Here, MAGA misses the point. Corporations and deportation threaten their jobs, not immigrants. ProPublica summarized the situation:

“The president-elect has told his supporters he would impose new limits on the numbers of immigrants allowed into the country and stage the largest mass deportation campaign in history. Meanwhile the shipbuilding industry, which he also says he supports and which has given significant financial support to Republican causes, is struggling to overcome an acute worker shortage. Immigrants have been critical to helping fill the gaps.”⁹

Everyone knows BIW has been struggling to hire enough workers to meet its goal of building two ships a year. Immigrants fill the gaps here, too. An apprentice told me two of her classmates are immigrants. “Both those apprentices are worried that they potentially won’t make it through the program before being deported.”¹⁰ I represent at least two immigrants in my shop, too. BIW cannot afford to lose any skilled workers, immigrants included. If they get deported, so do our jobs.

That is what Trump has called for, anyway. P18 Lucas Oswald connected Trump’s comments to overtime. The company plays favorites with overtime, Lucas said.¹¹ Management does not offer everyone in our department overtime. Sometimes, management offers one shift but not the other. Many of the members’ grievances revolve around overtime disputes. If the company offered us all more overtime, Lucas suggested, maybe we could build two ships a year.¹²

Of course Trump would think of outsourcing before overtime. At a Pennsylvania rally in September, Trump admitted:

“I hated to give overtime. I hated it. I’d get other people, I shouldn’t say this, but I’d get other people in. I wouldn’t pay.”¹³

Trump repeated himself at an October rally in Michigan:

“I used to hate to pay overtime… I’d say, ‘No, get me 10 other guys. I don’t want to have time and a half.’”¹⁴

Trump was no friend of overtime during his first term. NPR reported:

“A lot of Americans work overtime, which both candidates appear to recognize. But they differ on who should be eligible to earn time-and-a-half pay for work exceeding 40 hours a week.

“Earlier this year, the Biden-Harris administration finalized a rule making 4 million more workers eligible for overtime pay. The rule is facing multiple legal challenges.

“As president, Trump declined to defend a similar Obama-era rule, instead promulgating his own rule which resulted in far fewer people eligible for overtime pay.

“Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation blueprint for a second Trump presidency, proposes an overhaul of federal overtime rules that would give employers more flexibility.”¹⁵

These rules may not affect us today, but they will affect negotiations tomorrow. The 2023 contract includes strong overtime language. Giving employers more flexibility will give BIW more room to attack this language in 2026. With Trump suggesting he is going to outsource our work, BIW may even argue changes are necessary.

1. Donald Trump, interview by Hugh Hewitt, Hugh Hewitt & Duane Patterson, January 6, 2025. ↩︎
2. Brian Bryant, “IAM Union Continues to Champion Expansion of Domestic U.S. Navy Shipbuilding,” IAM, January 7, 2025. ↩︎
3. “About,” SCA, accessed January 8, 2025. ↩︎
4. Matthew Paxton, “Outsourcing the US shipyard industrial base will outsource American sovereignty,” Breaking Defense, August 5, 2024. ↩︎
5. Filip Timotija, “Trump praises collapse of bipartisan border deal: ‘I think it’s dead’,” The Hill, February 9, 2024; Stephen Groves and Mary Clare Jalonick, “Senate Republicans block bipartisan border package, then scramble to find support for Ukraine aid,” AP, February 7, 2024; Manu Raju et al. “GOP senators seethe as Trump blows up delicate immigration compromise,” CNN, January 25, 2024; Sahil Kapur and Frank Thorp V, “Republicans kill border bill in a sign of Trump’s strength and McConnell’s waning influence,” NBC, February 7, 2024. ↩︎
6. Cameron Harrison and Dom Shannon, “The H-1B visa program debate – beneath the corporate media spectacle,” People’s World, January 7, 2025. ↩︎
7. Ibid. ↩︎
8. Quoted in Julia Preston, “Pink Slips at Disney, but First, Training Foreign Replacements,” New York Times, June 3, 2015. ↩︎
9. Nicole Foy, “Trump Has Promised to Build More Ships. He May Deport the Workers Who Help Make Them,” ProPublica, January 2, 2025. ↩︎
10. Anonymous in texts with author, January 14, 2025. ↩︎
11. Lucas Oswald in conversation with author, January 8, 2025. ↩︎
12. Ibid. ↩︎
13. American Bridge 21st Century (@American_Bridge), “Unreal. Trump proves once again that he’s no friend of working Americans saying that he ‘hated to give overtime’ and that instead of paying it he’d bring new staff in,” Twitter, September 29, 2024. ↩︎
14. Donald Trump in political rally, Saginaw, MI, October 3, 2024. ↩︎
15. Andrea Hsu, “Here’s where Trump and Harris stand on 5 issues affecting workers,” NPR, November 1, 2024. ↩︎