The prime at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio is offering an early buy-out for up to 75 workers willing to leave the remediation contractor by the end of the year.
Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth launched its Self-Select Voluntary Separation Program on Thursday, its second such effort in the past couple of years, seeking 75 volunteers to leave their job at the deactivation and demolition project for the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The joint venture announced the voluntary workforce reduction in a press release.
The voluntary separation program started Thursday and interested employees have until Nov. 30 to sign up. Fluor-BWXT would decide upon individual applications requests by Dec. 10 and departing employees would leave their jobs on Dec. 17.
The separation program “is a stand-alone action,” Fluor-BWXT said in the press release. “This program will allow Fluor-BWXT to take the next steps in deactivation and demolition of the plant site.”
The joint venture did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment. Fluor-BWXT has about 1,900 total employees at the federal facility at Piketon, Ohio.
In documents obtained by Weapons Complex Monitor, Fluor-BWXT said some employees might want to end their DOE cleanup careers due to concerns about returning the jobsite during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The documents indicate 29 people at Fluor-BWXT have tested positive for the virus this year although only four cases are still active.
“It is a reduction in force by any name they want to call it,” John Knauff, president of United Steelworkers Union Local 689, which represents several hundred Fluor-BWXT workers, said by phone Thursday.
The collective bargaining agreement has a mechanism for negotiating such a move, but “they are avoiding the community’s reaction to a reduction in force,” Knauff added. The union official also questions if there are a large number of Portsmouth workers eager to end their environmental career at the site early.
After announcing a similar Self-Select Voluntary Separation Program in late 2018, Fluor-BWXT said in February 2019 that 46 people signed up for voluntary termination after the contractor team sought 75. The employer renewed its early out offer a couple of months later.
In 2018 and 2019, Fluor-BWXT said the voluntary reductions could help realign its workforce as it moved from deactivation to demolition of the X-326 Process Building in 2020.
Such voluntary workforce reductions are typically geared toward middle-aged workers who have been at the site a long time but might still be a few years short of full retirement age. Knauff said he did not immediately have information on the typical age of decommissioning workers at Portsmouth.
Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth has a 10-year, $3.8-billion contract that is currently scheduled to expire in March 2021. Last month the Department of Energy issued a request for information as it starts its market research for a new long-term replacement contract at the site.
