Newport News Shipbuilding employees have been getting high marks from their bosses for not coming to work when sick as the coronavirus spreads — and last week’s temperature checks prove the point.
Of some 76,000 plus temperatures checked as employees reported for work, only one person — a contractor — initially showed a temperature of more than 100 degrees on a no-touch infrared scanner.
But the follow-up check at a nearby monitoring station showed the contractor’s temperature was normal, said Beth Silsdorf, director of yard’s crisis response team.
“I really think our employees are exercising that social responsibility we need,” Silsdorf said.
The shipyard expanded its efforts to fend off the virus by introducing temperature checks this month. Employees whose temperatures exceed 100 degrees are not allowed in, and are sent home with a flyer of advice about seeking medical care and testing.
Newport News Shipbuilding has seen 42 cases of the coronavirus among its 25,000 employees and the hundreds of contractors working at the yard. Only four were from people who had been at the yard the day before they tested positive. More than half had not been on the yard for periods of a week to a month before testing positive.
The way most had been calling in when they’re ill or test positive has won repeated praise from shipyard executives ever since the first two case emerged March 23.
Silsdorf said employees moved through the checkpoints quickly, with little waiting or lining up. The one area where things did slow down was when employees started to line up without wearing the face masks the yard now requires.
“People showed up not wearing a mask and had to fumble around in their backpack to find one,” she said. But that problem eased after a few days — and compliance with the mask rule during the work day jumped, too, she said.
The temperature checks came at the same time the shipyard moved from three shifts to two.
Instead of a first shift on which three-quarters of employees work, with much smaller evening and night shifts, the yard now operates with a day shift, comprising about 55% of its workers with a 3 1/2-hour break before an evening shift with about 45% of employees.
The aim is to make social distancing easier by having fewer people onsite during the day and to give cleaning crews more time for disinfecting heavily trafficked areas.
A shift change on the old three-way schedule meant employees were both coming and going through turnstiles, stairwells and other common areas. For the crews responsible for cleaning these, that two-way traffic could be a challenge, Silsdorf said.
Newport News Shipbuilding President Jennifer Boykin said she expects the schedule will last at least through the end of July.
“The regional impact of COVID-19 is unpredictable and some estimates say there could be another spike in the fall,” she wrote in a memo to employees. “These unknowns are at the core of how our ‘new normal’ develops.”
But even if the yard returns to three shifts, she said they’d be split more evenly, instead of the old system with three quarters of people working on the first shift.
Dave Ress, 757-247-4535, dress@dailypress.com
