Hanwha, colleges get $8M federal grant to train shipyard workers
The program will quadruple its apprenticeship training programs from around 120 workers a year to around 500. Apprentices could earn around $30 a hour.
A consortium set up in 1996 to train future shipyard workers at the former Philadelphia Navy Yard says it will collect $8 million from a new U.S. Department of Labor program to prepare workers for Korean-owned Hanwha Philly Shipyard. The group hopes to quadruple apprenticeship graduates from around 120 workers a year to around 500.
“In line with President [Donald] Trumpʼs executive orders, these projects will help train our next generation of shipbuilders,” U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said in a statement.
Delaware County Community College and other area colleges have partnered with Hanwha in the nonprofit Collegiate Consortium for Workforce & Economic Development.
The consortium will set up “a new model of education and training for U.S. shipbuilding that will include sending U.S. instructors and workers overseas to learn advanced shipbuilding techniques” to be used at yards including Hanwha’s in South Philadelphia, the college said in a statement.
The money will help pay for training simulation models, online courses, and other programs for “an internationally recognized curriculum for shipbuilding skilled trades” to help trade unions, schools, and shipyards prepare new apprentices and more-experienced journeymen union workers, veterans, welders, steelworkers, electricians, steamfitters, and carpenters.
The partners “will accelerate the transfer of proven global shipbuilding practices to the U.S.,” Hanwha Philadelphia Shipyard chief executive David Kim said in a statement.
The consortium is chaired by Marta Yera Cronin, who is also the Delco community college president.
The shipyard, bought by South Korea’s family-owned Hanwha industrial group for $100 million in late 2024, employs around 1,700 but wants to double that. It plans to bring in new automated equipment to build ships and drones for the Navy, other government agencies, and private shippers.
Hanwha sends workers from its giant shipyards on Geojedo island, South Korea, to help complete work on civilian ships in Philadelphia.
The company has pledged to invest $5 billion in the yard, backed by U.S. government grants and loans. It says it wants to boost output from the current one ship every eight months to 10 to 20 a year.
Trump has said he’d like to see Hanwha technology used by U.S. workers to build nuclear submarines and battleships in Philadelphia.
That would require extensive new dry docks, cranes, power plants and other large capital investments, and a lot more ground and dock space than the 118-acre Hanwha-owned yard or the neighboring former Navy site where family-owned Rhoads Industries repairs and fabricates parts for General Dynamics, a major Navy submarine builder.
A separate $5.8 million Labor Department grant is going to the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, one of several civilian officer training schools slated to receive Korean-designed training vessels that the Philadelphia yard has been building in recent years. That money will develop additional shipbuilder training with foreign partners.
Under current contracts with the Philadelphia metalworkers’ union group that represents yard workers — itself a joint effort of the boilermakers, operating engineers, carpenters, and other unions — newly qualified workers can earn around $30 an hour. Experienced workers can qualify for as much as $100,000 a year, including overtime.
According to the consortium, community colleges have added trades education following a drop in U.S. public school shop classes and a shortage of U.S. workers interested in industrial work, including shipbuilding, which involves high-heat tools, dangerous materials, and outdoor work in all weather.
The grant will speed expansion of the consortium, which has received grants from Citizens Bank and support from port-related agencies in past years.
The college says it has trained more than 600 apprentices in all fields over the past 20 years. It stepped up its focus on shipbuilding beginning in 2017.