Point Shipyard

Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s Sparrows Point shipyard has won a crucial contract to build tunnel sections for a highway under Boston harbor, officials for the shipbuilders' union said last night.Murphy Thornton, president of Local 33 of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, said that a company official at the yard told him late yesterday afternoon that a letter of intent with the prime contractor in the project will be signed today. "This is not gossip," he said.The union estimates the contract will mean jobs for about 550 to 600 of its members for a year and a half to two years.

Picketing at BethShip -- formerly known as the Bethlehem Steel Sparrows Point shipyard -- is expected to begin at midnight, when the current contract covering about 1,000 workers expires.BethShip workers voted late last night to strike rather than accept a 42-month contract that offered no raise but held out the possibility of profit-sharing.Seven hours earlier, Bethlehem Steel Corp. had announced that a tentative contract had been reached by negotiators for the company and Lodge S-33 of the Industrial Union of Marine & Shipbuilding Workers of America/International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers (AFL-CIO)

BethShip workers voted late last night to strike rather than accept a 42-month contract that offered no raise, but held out the possibility of profit-sharing.Picketing at BethShip -- formerly known as the Bethlehem Steel Sparrows Point shipyard -- is expected to begin at midnight, when the current contract covering about 1,000 workers expires.Seven hours earlier, Bethlehem Steel Corp. had announced that a tentative contract had been reached by negotiators for the company and Lodge S-33 of the Industrial Union of Marine & Shipbuilding Workers of America/International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers (AFL-CIO)

Contracts to build tunnel sections for a highway beneath Boston Harbor and to refurbish a Navy dry dock have boosted employment at Bethlehem Steel's Sparrows Point shipyard to its highest level in nearly four years.The BethShip yard is hiring welders, shipfitters, pipefitters, crane operators, riggers, machinists and caulkers to fill the orders. Fewer than 100 workers remain on layoff, and they are expected to be recalled in the next several weeks as employment reaches a peak of about 1,200 hourly workers.

Bethlehem Steel Corp. said yesterday that its second-quarter profit fell 76 percent, a decline resulting from one-time events that disguised an otherwise strong quarter, analysts said.The Pennsylvania-based steel company reported net income of $38 million, down from $160 million in the second quarter of 1997. Net income per share after deducting preferred dividends was 23 cents, down about 83 percent from $1.33.Sales were $1.19 billion, down 1.7 percent from $1.21 billion.Accounting for the steep decline in profit were a $35 million second-quarter charge to close the Sparrows Point plate mill in the fourth quarter, a move that stemmed from the May acquisition of Coatesville, Pa.-based Lukens Inc.; and a gain in the year-earlier quarter of $135 million from Bethlehem's sale of its Iron Ore Co. of Canada.

The buyers of the defunct Sparrows Point shipyard plan to redevelop the 250-acre facility at Baltimore County's southeast corner into a vast industrial park, leasing space to barge building and ship repair companies as well as other businesses. Barletta Willis Investments, a partnership between Vincent Barletta, the president of Boston-based heavy construction firm The Barletta Co. and Boston venture capitalist Robert Willis, 35, is set to close on the $9.75 million deal this week to buy the sprawling shipyard, operated at its peak by Bethlehem Steel Corp.

Hale Intermodal Transport Co. announced yesterday that it would spend $8 million for four barges to be built at Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s Sparrows Point shipyard -- the first new vessels to be made there since 1988.Although the company could have saved money by ordering the barges from cheaper shipyards in Mississippi or Louisiana, it wanted to give Bethlehem's Baltimore County complex a boost, said Hale Intermodal Chairman Edwin F. Hale."They were good enough to hire some of us right out of high school to allow us to make tuition payments," he said.

The owners of the Sparrows Point shipyard have filed a federal lawsuit accusing the present and former owners of the old Bethlehem Steel mill on the Patapsco River peninsula of contaminating the dock and ship repair facility with cancer-causing benzene and other hazardous chemicals. SPS Limited Partnership and SPS 35, a limited liability corporation, are demanding cleanup and compensation for their own cleanup costs from Severstal North America, the 120-year-old steel mill's current owner, and from Arcelormittal USA, which owned the mill from 2005 until 2008.

The Bethlehem Steel shipyard at Sparrows Point has received a $25 million contract from the U.S. Navy to overhaul a multi-section floating drydock based at the Norfolk Naval Base.Work on the Sustain, the 552 foot-long, 124-foot-wide vessel, is expected to provide jobs for more than 650 people. The company plans to recall 650 furloughed workers needed for the project. The overhaul is to start in May and continue through October. Work will include steel repair and replacement, piping renewel, tank blasting and coating.

The Bethlehem Steel shipyard in Sparrows Point has won a $25 million contract to overhaul a floating Navy dry dock, a project that will provide jobs for more than 650 furloughed ship workers next year.Work on the Sustain, a 552-foot-long, 124-foot-wide, multisection drydock based in Norfolk, Va., is to start in May and continue through October. Work will include steel repair and replacement, piping renewal, tank blasting and coating.Bidding for the work was restricted to shipyards in the Navy's Norfolk home port area, in which the Sparrows Point facility is included.