Navy contract award will lead to layoffs in Hampton Roads

Mike Gooding, WVEC -- A Navy decision to award a repair contract for USS Ramage to a shipyard in Mississippi will lead to layoffs in Hampton Roads. Contracting rules require that if work on a ship will last more than six months, the Navy has to solicit bids nationwide and not just in a ship's home port. The Ramage job is projected to last nine months. Last week, the Defense Department announced that Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi had won the $14 million Navy contract. The head of the Virginia Ship Repair Association told 13News Now the impact here will be harsh.

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Navy will send Norfolk-based ship to Gulf Coast for repairs. Here's the toll on local shipyards, military families

Robert McCabe, The Virginian-Pilot -- The region's ship-repair association is pushing back after the Navy awarded a contract for work on a Norfolk-based destroyer to a yard in Pascagoula, Miss., roughly 1,000 miles away. "It's very disheartening," said Bill Crow, president of the Virginia Ship Repair Association, which has 250 member companies. After a wave of hundres of layoffs began to sweep across local shipyards a year ago, the expectation had been that the Ramage contract would go to a Hampton Roads facility. "This is not just a one-off anomaly," Crow added. "It likely has the ability to just be the tip of the iceberg."

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