With a Friday deadline looming, the Fluor-led operations contractor for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina is making plans to fire employees who have refused COVID-19 vaccinations while also issuing a final plea for the holdouts to get inoculated.
In a Monday staff email, viewed by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing and titled “Next Steps for Unvaccinated Employees,” Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) said out-processing for those refusing the first shot, “except those notified of an approved accommodation,” will occur Thursday and Friday.
Employees who normally end their work week on Wednesday or Thursday should plan to report to the designated building on Thursday to turn in site badges, dosimetry gauges and all government equipment, according to the email. Staff who typically clock out on Friday or Saturday should plan to out-process on Friday, Oct. 15.
Friday is the day when the unvaxed are set to lose access to the federal complex. Employees have until Nov. 16 to receive their final shot of Pfizer or Moderna or the one-shot Johnson & Johnson. Those getting their final shots by Nov. 16 will receive their full measure of COVID-19 immunity by Nov. 30, the date when refusers are formally terminated.
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions added that even those who refuse to start the vaccination regimen by Oct. 15 will be welcomed back if they get their shots by Nov. 16.
“It is SRNS’ sincere desire that those who are unvaccinated will change their minds and decide to receive the vaccine and remain employed by SRNS,” according to the email. While on-site and electronic access will no longer be available beyond Oct. 15 for those who have not received their first dose, “employees who reconsider their positions and decide to receive the first dose of the vaccine by the timeline below may regain their site access and return to work with SRNS before Nov. 30.
“There is no plan for SRNS to drop the vaccination requirement in the future,” according to the Savannah River Nuclear Solutions email. “This is a permanent requirement.”
Employees opting to retire will also turn in their badges this week and end employment by Nov. 30, or an earlier agreed upon date, SRNS goes on to say.
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions said in early September it would mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for workers, save for those who qualified for certain medical or religious exemptions. Triad Nuclear Security, which runs the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and UCOR, the Amentum-Jacobs cleanup team at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, are the other nuclear-weapon site contractors that mandated vaccination before the Joe Biden administration did so. The White House and DOE recently instructed contractors to update existing agreements to order vaccinations by Dec. 8.
