The Amentum-Jacobs joint venture in charge of remediating the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee said Tuesday it will make vaccination against COVID-19 a condition of employment for its 2,000 workers.
That makes the team the third DOE nuclear-site contract to mandate the vaccine, after contractors at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Employees for the Oak Ridge contractor have until Nov. 1 to receive their final shot, UCOR President and CEO Ken Rueter said in an announcement emailed to Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
“[O]ur leadership team decided that with the surge in cases in the community and among the workforce due to the virus variants, taking this proactive step is the best way to keep our workforce safe,” Rueter said in the statement.
The state of Tennessee has logged more than 1 million cases of COVID-19 with about 6,700 reported in a single day this week, according to an online post from the Tennessee Department of Health. There have been 13,630 deaths in the state since the pandemic started and 76 in the past day. Mayo Clinic data indicates 46% of adults in the state, between ages 18 and 64, are fully vaccinated.
More than 70% of the UCOR workforce is already vaccinated, said a spokesperson for the contractor who added Tuesday that plans for the mandate were shared with employees Aug. 26.
The contractor will consider exemptions for disability/medical reasons or religious reasons on a case-by-case basis, according to the UCOR statement.
Triad National Security, which operates Los Alamos for the National Nuclear Security Administration, has given its staff until Oct. 15 to be fully inoculated against the virus. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the manager of the Savannah River Site, had not set a deadline as of Tuesday.
The DOE, which is in the process of having federal employees and contract workers at nuclear cleanup sites formally declare their vaccination status, has been pushing its contractors to pull out all the stops to combat COVID-19, including contractor vaccine mandates.
Of course, vaccine mandates at hospitals, schools and elsewhere have drawn pushback, and Tuesday Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) voiced his opposition to the Savannah River contractor’s mandate via Twitter . “I am not anti-vaccine, but I am anti-vaccine mandate,” Duncan said. “A forced vaccine is an infringement of liberty/medical privacy & should never be a condition for employment.”
Similarly, a group called New Mexico Freedoms Alliance was expected to hold a protest Tuesday at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
