IFPTE Local 4 at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Affiliates with Maine AFL-CIO

Please join us in welcoming International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) Local 4 to the Maine AFL-CIO! Chartered in 1918, Local 4 is the largest labor union at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (PNS), representing nearly 2,000 federal service employees.

Local 4 represents engineers and technicians working across the nuclear and non-nuclear departments, including electrical, hydraulic, chemical and many other areas. Local 4 President Dave Bosse of Eliot has worked as an engineer on propulsion systems for 24 years and has been involved in his union for half of that time. He first ran for steward to help out after a business agent retired because the union needed more people to get involved.

“I've been a volunteer at the soup kitchen in Berwick for 13 years, so my interest in trying to help people kind of took precedence,” he said.

So he asked the local president what it took to become a steward, got some training and was off and running. One of the challenges in the federal sector is that union security clauses are illegal so workers don’t have to pay for the cost of collective bargaining in union-represented workplaces.

“People will say, ‘I don't need to pay dues because you're obligated to represent me anyway,” said Bosse. “So it gets kind of tough to encourage people to join.”

But he says trades people who have been union members in other workplaces are impressed by how low the dues are, often a third or a quarter what they were previously paying. Currently, the union is using a lot of resources to fight the Trump administration's illegal attacks on federal unions. The President stripped Local 4 of their collective bargaining rights, but Bosse said management at the shipyard is trying to work with the union as long as they don’t call it “negotiations.”

“If we can have a discussion and kind of work things out to a mutually agreeable situation, they're trying to do that,” he said. “They know that we've been around for over a hundred years and we’re not going anywhere. We have a mission here to get the boats in and out and back to the Navy as quickly and safely and with the highest quality possible, so let's try and work together.”

Through these informal discussions, he said the union has made progress with management, such as allowing people to work remotely, which has been very helpful for members who live far from the facility. Local 4 members have also been impacted by the federal shutdown and were only paid through September 30. As of our interview, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard had gone 40 days without getting paid, but most federal workers have received their pay since then. Working without pay posed a hardship for members, especially for younger members who hadn’t saved up emergency funds.

“A lot of younger firefighters here were like, ‘We're ready to quit,’” Bosse said. “And that's a serious thing because without them here, we can't do our job.”

Bosse said he was able to get a state-backed, no-interest loan through Kennebunk Savings Bank to help him get through the shutdown (thanks to a new law unions worked to pass). Unfortunately, the bank had to pause the issuance of those loans when it got overwhelmed with applications and processing times increased dramatically. Fortunately, some members were able to get loans from other banks and credit unions. He said most financial institutions were also sympathetic to his members when they called about their delaying payments for mortgages and vehicle loans.

These days Bosse is focused on rebuilding the union and fighting for what his members deserve. Since the Trump administration stopped allowing the Navy to deduct dues from his members' paychecks he’s had to work extra hard to get people signed up for E-dues. Bosse noted that a small percentage of members who became supervisors have kept paying union dues because they “believe in the cause.” He believes that payroll deductions will be restored eventually

“When the President came out and said he was trying to get rid of all unions, everybody was saying, ‘Oh, the unions are done,’" he said. "But you know, we're still here. We're not going anywhere.”