NS&D Monitor
09/11/2015
CNS Reaches Agreement with Unionized Y-12 Guards
Y-12 nuclear weapons plant managing contractor Consolidated Nuclear Security this week reached a new five-year labor agreement with the International Guards Union of America, Local 3. The relatively small contract covers about 45 employees — Central Alarm Station and Beta-9 operators at Y-12, as well as firearms instructors at the Central Training Facility.
According to Local 3 President Shannon Gray, the new contract includes a 3 percent wage hike in each of the five years. Gray said the workers approved the contract proposal Sunday evening by a “very large” margin.
Gray was happy with the contract results, and he said he was pleased with the tone of the negotiations from CNS. “I’ll be honest,” he said. “I was really apprehensive going into it with everything that’s going on at Pantex.”
More than 1,100 Pantex Plant workers represented by the Metal Trades Council are on strike. CNS is also the manager at that facility.
Gray said the IGUA compromised during the talks and gave up some things, but overall he thought the trade-offs were reasonable. Down the road, Gray and the IGUA, Local 3, will have to negotiate a much larger contract with CNS, covering about 500 security police officers at Y-12. But that contract doesn’t expire until 2018.
Asked if the recent negotiations for the alarm operators and instructors at CTF would set the stage for future negotiations, Gray said, “I hope so.”
Besides approving new healthcare options, the union also agreed to contribute a small percentage of their pay toward their pensions (.5 percent in the first year, followed by 1 percent in the following years). There also was some reduction of the company’s contributions to 401(k) plans.
Y-12 Protesters to be Resentenced on Sept. 15.
The resentencing of three activists who gained international attention for breaking into the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in 2012 and defacing the plant’s uranium storage facility with blood and paint will be done by telephone conference Sept. 15 rather than a hearing in U.S. District Court in Knoxville – where they were convicted and originally sentenced.
U.S. District Judge Amul Thapar will convene the hearing at 10 a.m., with Plowshares protesters Sister Megan Rice, Michael Walli, and Greg Boertje-Obed, known collectively as the Transform Now Plowshares, on the conference call along with their attorneys and federal prosecutors.
Rice, Walli, and Boertje-Obed were released from federal prison in May after the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned their conviction on sabotage charges – the most serious of their felony convictions. They still face resentencing on other federal charges associated with the July 28, 2012, break-in at Y-12, but that is expected to be largely a formality because even Jeff Theodore, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case, acknowledged they have already served enough time for the other charges for damaging government property.
As noted by William Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans and a member of the defense team, “At stake is whether they will be released for time served or they will be ordered to be on probation for a period of time.”
In a letter to supporters of the three protesters, Quigley wrote, “Defense lawyers have asked they be released and not put on probation and have also asked that there be no restitution ordered.” Their earlier sentencing included an order that they pay more than $50,000 in restitution for damage done during their protest.
According to court filings, the government will seek to impose probation. Theodore has said he will ask the judge to place the three under “supervised release” for at least a year. In addition, the government is also asking for a special condition: that the three be prohibited “from entering any nuclear facility during the period of supervised release.”
The federal prosecutor noted this is less restrictive than the terms of their pretrial release from jail, when they were ordered not go to any government facility.
Y-12 UPF Design-And-Management Team to Consolidate Locations
The design-and-management team for the Y-12 site’s Uranium Processing Facility’s is vacating a couple of its leased buildings and will consolidate activities this fall at two facilities in Oak Ridge’s Commerce Park.
Kathryn King, a spokeswoman for Y-12 contractor Consolidated Nuclear Security, confirmed that the team is moving out of the 9,000-square-foot facility on Union Valley Road in Oak Ridge, where the design operations were previously headquartered. The UPF team is also moving out of the Cherhala office complex in Knox County.
According to King, UPF activities will be consolidated at two facilities at Commerce Park – an existing lease space at 1099 Commerce Park Drive and a second facility nearby.
“We are in the process of creating a walkable campus in two facilities in Commerce Park for increased safety and greater cost efficiency,” King said in response to questions. “The Commerce Park facilities can house as many as 850-900 people.”
Bechtel National is managing much of the UPF work under a subcontract with Consolidated Nuclear Security, a partnership that is itself headed by Bechtel. The Army Corps of Engineers also is managing some of the early site readiness and preparation projects at Y-12 for the Uranium Processing Facility.
Y-12 Uranium Processing Center Gets Mixed Marks in CSOOT Review
Because of its old age and deteriorated condition, the 9212 uranium processing center receives more scrutiny than any other facility at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, including an annual review by the group known as the Continued Safe Operability Oversight Team, or CSOOT.
As revealed in a recently released memo by staff of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, the latest CSOOT review apparently had some good things – and some bad things – to report about the World War II-era 9212.
On the good side, the review team did not find any new safety issues that would warrant further limits on operations at the uranium facility. According to the Aug. 7 memo to headquarters by safety board staff assigned to Y-12, the CSOOT team also acknowledged some positives over the past year, such as the site establishing an administrative limit for “material at risk” in the old building, as well as completion of the Nuclear Facility Risk Reduction Project.
The special oversight team, however, reported continuing concerns about a “growing maintenance backlog” of equipment at 9212, which is the Oak Ridge plant’s principal area for processing weapon-grade uranium. (It is due to be replaced when the multibillion-dollar Uranium Processing Facility comes online around 2025.)
The safety board staff memo states: “The (CSOOT) report notes improvements to maintenance planning and execution processes but the maintenance backlog for enriched uranium operations has grown by 15 percent. The CSOOT is concerned that operating with known material issues could degrade safety and recommends an increase in designated facility maintenance, engineering and production support personnel to slow the growth of this backlog.”
The safety board staff reported that the site manager for Consolidated Nuclear Security, the government’s managing contractor for Y-12, had plans to establish “a dedicated maintenance team” to cover certain areas of 9212. This would address the CSOOT recommendation, the memo said. “Wet chemistry and metal production areas (at 9212) are to serve as the pilot for this team,” according to the DNFSB memo. The special maintenance team is to be established by the end of September.
The role of CSOOT is largely the response to a 2007 letter that the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board wrote to the Department of Energy, drawing attention to the potential safety risks of continuing uranium processing operations at 9212, which is one of the oldest buildings at Y-12.
Y-12 Collective Bargaining Deal Nears Another Expiration Date
With the labor dispute persisting at the Pantex Plant, where workers have been on strike since Aug. 29, there’s a sense of anxiety and uncertainty among some workers at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge more than 1,000 miles away.
The collective bargaining agreement between the Atomic Trades and Labor Council, which represents many of the unions at Y-12, and Consolidated Nuclear Security – the government’s managing contractor at both Y-12 and Pantex, sister plants in the nuclear weapons complex – is due to expire on Sept. 28.
Although there is a presumption that the existing agreement at Y-12 will be extended again – it has already been extended on multiple occasions, in part to give the company more time to complete negotiations at Pantex – there has been no announcement at this point.
Steve Jones, the president of the ATLC in Oak Ridge, indicated Tuesday that the Sept. 28 contract expiration date remains in effect, and he said no bargaining talks have been scheduled with CNS. He acknowledged that it would be unrealistic to think that any kind of contract agreement for Y-12 workers could be worked out over the next week and a half, and he said he may have more information regarding that situation before week’s end.
Meanwhile, at Pantex, Metal Trades Council President Clarence Rashada said Consolidated Nuclear Security had not approached him about returning to the negotiating table. The rank-and-file at Pantex have expressed their anger on the picket lines regarding the government contractor’s attempts to reduce their benefits. More than 1,100 workers are on strike at the plant near Amarillo, Texas. Pantex is the nation’s hub for assembling and dismantling nuclear warhead parts.
