AS SHUTDOWN STRETCHES TO SECOND WEEK, OAK RIDGE FURLOUGHS LOOM

Department of Energy contractors are expected to have to begin furloughing employees performing cleanup work in Oak Ridge as early as this week due to the continuing government shutdown, while employees at the Y-12 National Security Complex could have until Oct. 17, the head of Y-12’s metal trades union told NW&M Monitor. As the government shutdown stretches into a second week, Steve Jones, the president of the Atomic Trades and Labor Council in Oak Ridge, told NW&M Monitor that he’d been informed that carryover funding that has been buoying contractors in Oak Ridge would run out soon—first for cleanup work and then at Y-12. The cleanup furloughs would specifically impact URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) as well as other contractors, while the Y-12 furloughs would impact management and operating contractor B&W Y-12. The NNSA, however, has been mum on how long its sites—or its federal headquarters—can keep running on leftover funds, which varies from site to site. “I worry about what happens when we have to restart all of this work,” Jones said. “It’s not as easy as just turning it off and back on. There’s a lot more to it than that.”