Employees of Department of Energy’s cleanup contractors at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio as well as the Idaho National Laboratory could be sacked if they fail to receive their final vaccination against COVID-19 by Dec. 1, as spelled out in recent documents.
Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth workers who are not yet inoculated, or applied for a medical or religious exemption, are “running out of time to meet the requirement of being fully vaccinated by Dec. 1,” according to a Wednesday memo to staff at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant complex, which was viewed by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
Fluor-BWXT has roughly 1,900 employees and has held the decontamination and decommissioning contract at Portsmouth since March 2011. It is possible Fluor-BWXT could part company with 500 employees as a result of the vaccine mandate, a source said Thursday morning. A company spokesman did not immediately respond to an inquiry on the ratio of unvaccinated people at the Piketon cleanup project that are unvaccinated.
Becoming fully vaccinated involves taking a second shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine by Nov. 17, according to the letter dated Wednesday to Fluor-BWXT workers from J.D. Dowell, site project director for the contractor’s remediation work in Pike County, Ohio.
Fluor-BWXT staff who don’t provide proof of vaccination by Nov. 18, could face “an unpaid suspension” from Nov. 18 to Nov. 30. That would be followed by firing “for Cause” if they are still unvaccinated come Dec. 1, according to the letter.
In addition, Fluor Idaho, the departing cleanup contractor at the Idaho National Laboratory, ordered its workforce to be fully vaccinated by Dec. 1, according to a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board staff report dated Oct. 8 and posted online this week.
Fluor Idaho mandated vaccination against the coronavirus as a condition of employment in a Sept. 13 employee bulletin, according to an update to the safety board. This came after the Joe Biden administration issued executive orders Sept. 9 calling for direct federal employees and government contractor employees to be vaccinated. It also came after the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare implemented crisis standards of care on Sept. 16 that essentially allows healthcare providers to “ration and prioritize care” as a measure of last resort. Hospitals in many parts of the nation are near full capacity due to a surge in COVID patients, according to media reports.
Both Fluor Idaho and Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth are considering exemption requests on a case by case basis.
The Portsmouth contract, now valued at $4.4 billion is scheduled to run until late March 2023. Fluor Idaho has been in charge of the Idaho Cleanup Contract since June 2016 under a $2.2-billion contract set to end Dec. 31. At that point, Fluor Idaho will pass the cleanup baton to a Jacobs-led limited liability corporation, the Idaho Environmental Coalition. Fluor Idaho has roughly 1,500 workers.
Neither Fluor or DOE commented by deadline.
