Shipyard Workers to Rally Against Sequestration

Ever since sequestration went into effect on March 4, Paul O'Connor, president of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard's Metal Trades Council, has been concerned people don't understand its real economic impact.

He believes this will change a great deal on Thursday when hundreds of Portsmouth Naval Shipyard workers rally along with members of the New Hampshire and Maine chapters of the AFL-CIO, federal employees with the Federal Aviation Administration and Transportation Security Administration and business people.

The rally is scheduled to take place in Prescott Park on Thursday at noon after it was rescheduled from Wednesday due to Tuesday's winter storm, he said.

"We're connecting the dots from sequestration to the local impact," O'Connor said.

O'Connor said for 22 weeks beginning at the end of April that are designed to coincide with the end of the Navy's 2013 fiscal year. The Metal Trades Council is comprised of more than 2,500 union members, which is more than one-third of the shipyard's 6,500 work force.

On Tuesday afternoon, released a joint statement condemning the furloughs.

While shipyard workers already know they will feel the impact of sequestration directly when they lose the equivalent of one month's pay, O'Connor believes many other people do not realize how much they are also affected by it.

"There are a lot of tentacles to this and we will be discussing them in detail during the rally," he said.