Tacoma Boat Near Bankruptcy Again

Tacoma Boatbuilding Co. may file for bankruptcy protection after the Navy's surprise weekend decision to pull a big ship-retrofitting job from the company.

The company said it would seek protection unless the Navy agrees to revise a $48 million contract to refurbish the USNS Hayes. The Navy pulled the Hayes from Tacoma Boat over the weekend and moved it to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton.

It would be the second bankruptcy filing in the past five years for the shipbuilding and repair company.

Navy officials pulled the Hayes after Tacoma Boat sought to increase the value of the contract.

A revision in the contract is unlikely. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Bremerton, said today the company told the Navy it needed to increase the contract by $8 million, to $56 million. Dicks said he was involved in the discussions between Tacoma Boat and the Navy.

``(Tacoma Boat) made it clear to the Navy that without the $8 million it would go bankrupt,'' Dicks said. ``But the Navy decided there were no assurances the company could stay open even if it granted the increase.''

The Navy says the Hayes job will be finished at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton.

Tacoma Boat shut down its operations yesterday after contacting its 300 employees over the weekend, telling them not to show up for work. Mark Enslow, business manager for Local 568 of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, which represents more than 100 Tacoma Boat employees, said the company told him it would try to restart operations this week.

``They aren't calling it a closure,'' Enslow said. ``They say it's temporary.''

In its news release today, Tacoma Boat didn't address whether the company would seek to reopen if it filed for bankruptcy. Company officials did not return calls. The company said it is seeking a buyer for its yacht-making subsidiaries in Wisconsin and Florida. The company has closed both those facilities.

The recent events are the latest in a long series of setbacks for the company, which includes a near-bankruptcy in the 1970s, an earlier bankruptcy filing in 1985 and a drop in employment from 2,900 in the early 1980s to present levels at less than 300.

Tacoma Boat was about 90 percent finished with the Hayes renovation, one source said. The company was converting the Hayes from an oceanographic research ship to an acoustic research ship, according to the Navy.

John LaCasse, partner in Trilogy Yachts in Seattle, for which Tacoma Boat is building two yachts, said he believes Tacoma Boat will try to sort out the problems and restart work.

Each of the Trilogy yachts is worth between $12 million and $14 million, LaCasse said. He said the boats, each of which is about 150 feet long, are not quite half finished and are scheduled to be finished next fall or winter.

LaCasse said he is looking into using the Tacoma Boat yard and employees to finish work on the yachts if Tacoma Boat can't restart operations.

Tacoma Boat, a stockholder-owned company, struggled financially through most of the 1980s and emerged from bankruptcy reorganization in 1987, but it has never been robust.

Last month, the Associated Press reported that Tacoma Boat had failed to pay health and welfare benefits for its union workers for more than two months. The AP also said two of the company's suppliers had sued the company in Pierce County Superior Court, seeking payments.

The company reported losses of $3.3 million during the first six months of 1990, compared with a profit of $342,000 for the first six months of 1989.

In May, the company's shareholders approved a 10-for-1 stock consolidation, which is commonly used by companies to boost a low per-share stock price. The move temporarily lifted the company's stock from 25 cents a share to more than $2 a share.

However, since then, the stock has fallen back below $1 a share. The stock closed yesterday at 37.5 cents a share. The company is traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Enslow said he has known for some time that the company was experiencing financial problems but was surprised that the closure occurred so abruptly.

Neither the unions nor the state was notified of the layoff. Under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act , employers such as Tacoma Boat normally would have to give 60 days notice of a layoff. Yesterday, a state spokesman said a company is required to notify the state only if the layoff will be for more than six months.