The monthly pace of retirement notices among prime contractor employees during 2021 at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state is up sharply compared with last year, especially in recent months, according to the two most recent monthly reports by the site’s services contractor.
“The Retirement Program has had a significant increase in activity this past quarter for several reasons including aging workforce, COVID-19 requirements, and the October report of lower lump sum factors for 2022 that were announced in mid-October,” according to the contract and performance report for October, published in November by Leidos-led Hanford Mission Integration Services (HMIS).
Average retirement requests for Hanford Site prime contractors since February have been about 35 and are on the rise, according to the contractor. That’s up from an average of 20 to 25 retirements a month for 2020.
“September ended with nearly 60 retirements processed and [the] trend continues to increase,” according to the contract and performance report for that month. Additional staffing has been tapped to handle the uptick in retirement requests, the contractor said.
Chatter within the DOE weapons complex in recent weeks has suggested some long-standing contractor hands whose firms do work for the agency’s Office of Environmental Management are retiring rather than complying with a government COVID-19 vaccine mandate stemming from President Joe Biden’s September executive orders. The “lump sum” factors cited in the latest report apparently refers to the amount of severance money available under any reduction in force.
“In order to manage this increase in activity, Workforce Solutions (WS) has secured a Professional Support resource with knowledge of the Hanford Site Pension Program to assist with the current influx of requests for retirement meetings,” according to the October report.
HMIS took over from another Leidos-led contractor team Jan. 25 as the services contractor at the site. As part of its responsibility as landlord or city manager for Hanford, HMIS processes the retirement paperwork of all the prime contractors at the former plutonium production complex being cleaned up by DOE.
“As is the case in many organizations today, there are a large number of site employees eligible to retire, and there is a broad range of factors that people consider when making retirement decisions,” a spokesperson for HMIS said in a Tuesday email. “The data referenced is retirements for all prime contractors on the site, which HMIS processes as a part of its contract with DOE,” the spokesperson said.
