Members of Hanford Guards Union Local 21 voted down the latest contract proposal Dec. 6 from the landlord contractor at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, as the labor dispute entered a third week.
As of Thursday, neither the Hanford Guards Union nor Hanford Mission Integration Solutions (HMIS) reported much headway in resolving the dispute since the contractor’s Nov. 27 lockout of the unionized armed patrol guards at the site.
“Lockout continues and HMIS is refusing to negotiate,” Local 21 President Chris Hall said in a Thursday afternoon email to Exchange Monitor. Hours earlier a spokesperson for HMIS, said “Discussions have continued this week but I don’t have an update at this time.”
Over the weekend, Hall said the Dec. 6 vote “was 99% against the company’s proposal,” Hall said in a Sunday email. “They raised it [the pay scale] by half of one percent the first year and didn’t address the other non-financial issues.”
Hall said the union would like to see guards better paid for being prepared to put their safety at risk during a physical attack on the nuclear site. Likewise, he also thinks the protective force should be compensated for DOE’s scrutiny of their off-duty travel and private lives.
An email inquiry to DOE about federal monitoring of security guards’ after-work activity, brought a Thursday reply from a public affairs spokesperson for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which oversees DOE nuclear weapons sites.
“There is no policy mandating domestic travel reporting for protective forces,” the NNSA spokesperson said. “There are requirements for all clearance holders to report foreign travel and there are additional reporting and requirements for sensitive foreign country visits for those with high-level clearances. We also have reporting requirements for income earned through winning at a casino (or other large income changes). This is established in the personnel security order.”
The unionized armed security patrol has been locked out of their jobs at the cleanup site for the former plutonium production complex since Nov. 27. Union and HMIS bargainers have engaged in talks with assistance from a federal mediator. The prior contract ended Nov. 1 and was extended until Nov. 27.
In addition to issues such as wages, benefits and arbitration, local union president Hall has said his members want “medical autonomy,” or the right to decide themselves about taking any future vaccinations or medical procedures.
Many Hanford guards took part in an unsuccessful legal challenge to the COVID-19 vaccination policy for DOE contractors at Hanford during the pandemic. With the end of the pandemic, DOE is no longer seeking information from site workers on their vaccination status.
The current labor dispute affects the two-thirds of Hanford security people who are members of the guard’s union, HMIS said. The one-third that are non-union salaried employees remain on the job, according to HMIS.
In addition, many guard supervisors from Hanford and other DOE sites have been brought in during the lockout, according to the contractor. HMIS is made up of Leidos, Centerra and Parsons.
