BRAC searches for workers

By Karen Middleton
karen@athensnews-courier.com

November 12, 2008 09:58 pm

— Joe Ritch, chairman of the Tennessee Valley BRAC Committee, said Wednesday that the area would come up short by more than 5,000 employees when it comes to filling jobs resulting from the Base Realignment and Closure Act moves by 2011.
BRAC involves the closing of 22 bases and the realignment of 33 others, including Redstone. The jobs are coming from northern Virginia with RSA Environmental Analysis; the 2nd Recruiting Brigade; Missile Defense Agency/Space and Missile Defense Command; Army Material Command/U.S. Army Security Assistance Command and the Rotary Wing Center.
Redstone is expected to receive 6,000 people from the Arlington, Va., area, but employ several thousand more locally.
The government will spend $403.2 million on 1.6 million-square-feet of facilities to house the agencies. The office complexes, Von Braun I, which will house the Space and Missile Defense Command, and Von Braun II have been completed and work on Von Braun III, which will be twice as large as Von Braun I and II combined, is underway.
“Workforce development is a very serious challenge,” said Ritch in closing remarks to the latest “BRAC to the Future” update at the Von Braun Center.
Officials from throughout North Alabama and South Tennessee gathered to hear how BRAC moves would affect their communities.
“There may be a crisis,” said Ritch. “There is a shortage of highly-educated people.”
Ritch said the committee predicts that based on positions available, there will be a shortage of 1,950 people in the technical field and 3,170 in the business field. He said the greatest demand would be in engineers and logisticians. He said the average yearly starting pay would be $80,000.
The Tennessee Valley BRAC Committee recently traveled to Austin, Texas, to conduct a job fair. While relying heavily on the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the committee is also reaching out to recruit interns from other engineering schools such as Auburn University, Ritch said.

Quality of life
Ritch said that, based on interviews with the 1,400 people who have already made the move and those in Virginia contemplating the move, there are four main concerns: misconceptions about Alabama, adequate schools, available jobs for spouses and the housing market.
“We are not only known for fire hoses, dogs and Bull Conner, but that is what many people think about when they think of Alabama,” said Ritch. “But we are also the people who put a man on the moon. These are stigmas we have to overcome.”
Gen. Lloyd W. “Fig” Newton, a member of the nine-person BRAC commission that determined which bases would be targeted for the moves, said the 2005 BRAC is larger than all other previous BRACs combined. “There will probably be another, but it will be 10 to 15 years from now,” he said.
Newton said one of the largest factors determining which community will benefit from the moves is available energy sources. He said eight lawsuits had been filed against the commission by states and communities trying to stop the move of jobs from their local military bases because of the loss of millions of dollars in revenue.