PORTSMOUTH D&D WORKERS RATIFY NEW CONTRACT

Workers at the Portsmouth D&D project represented by the United Steelworkers labor union ratified a new contract with Fluor-B&W Portsmouth, LLC, Aug. 14. The new contract was ratified by a margin of 3 ½ to 1, according to USW Local 689. “We are happy about the outcome of the USW ratification vote and we look forward to continuing to work with USW and its members,” FBP spokesman Jason Lovins said yesterday. The new contract contains only “some minor differences” from the previous collective bargaining agreement, according to USW Local 689 President Herman Potter. “The ratified contract includes all of the provisions previously tentatively agreed to by USW and Fluor-B&W Portsmouth, and was a complete package including wages and benefits,” Lovins said.

However, the ratification of a new contract is unlikely to bring to an end a long-running dispute over pension benefits at the Portsmouth site. At issue are questions over whether some D&D project workers who transferred to FBP from USEC, which previously performed “cold shutdown” work at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, are being improperly kept out of the benefit plan previously established for Portsmouth’s cleanup contractors. Local union officials have said the previously established plan provides better benefits than the one FBP has created for new employees. While DOE has taken the position that the FBP contract is a new contract at Portsmouth and not a follow-on to USEC’s previous contract, the local union has charged that the work being performed is largely the same under both contracts. As a result of the dispute, local union officials in April unanimously rejected holding a ratification vote on a previous FBP collective bargaining agreement proposal. According to Potter, the new contract includes language that would allow for future changes if the broader pension benefits dispute is resolved. “The membership believed that with the reopener language regarding the continuity of benefits (ie.  “Grandfather status”) that it may be in our best interest to ratify in order to alleviate any drastic change in DOE directed strategy that may negatively impact this USW local,” he said in a written response yesterday. 

Potter said, “I have made it extremely clear that even if we ratify a collective bargaining agreement that we can never give in to the issues of continuity of benefits from one contractor to another in the DOE complex. One would assume that a government agency would be politically motivated to fulfill their obligations without the need for more restrictive regulation to ensure that the Department of Energy does that which is intended and proper.” He added, “We have been challenging DOE in regards to indirectly and illegally interfering with site collective bargaining agreements.  We have also been gathering a lot of documentation supporting that claim in case we pursue legal action. We think with the reopener language and a ratified CBA that this may give the legal arm of the DOE the opportunity to reconsider their interpretations of law in order to do that which is proper without adding to our legal position.”