LOS ALAMOS, CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE UNION REACH AGREEMENT

The union representing approximately 750 construction and maintenance workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory reached agreement with the lab last week on a new five-year labor contract that will run through 2017. The New Mexico Building and Construction Trades Council represents plumbers and pipefitters, sheet metal workers, electricians, laborers, cement masons, ironworkers and other craft workers at the laboratory, and it completed five different agreements with the lab covering the workers. Union Executive Director Ray Baca told NW&M Monitor that the negotiations went smoothly and he confirmed that wage increases accompanied the new contract, but he declined to specify exact amounts. Lab spokesman Kevin Roark also declined to provide details of the agreements, which will expire in September of 2017. “This agreement is the culmination of a decades-long relationship with the Laboratory—one that has provided long-term, family supporting careers for thousands of construction workers in Northern and Central New Mexico,” Baca said in a statement.