SUMMERLIN, NEV. — A labor union official representing workers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee had kind words Thursday for the manner in which the site’s remediation contractor, an Amentum-Jacobs partnership, handled its COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
“They confronted their unvaccinated,” by setting an early, Oct. 1 deadline, Jimmy Hart, president of the Metal Trades Department at AFL-CIO, said of the UCOR team Thursday during the ExchangeMonitor’s Radwaste Summit here.
Those employees able to qualify for religious or medical exemptions got accommodations. Initially, the Metal Trades Department feared about 400 members of its 1,200-person unionized workforce at UCOR might leave rather than get vaccinated against COVID-19. In the end it was only 25. In “crunch time,” the people got vaccinated, Hart said.
Of UCOR’s 1,900 member workforce, including union, salaried and subcontractors, the contractor only expects to lose about 10%, or 190 people, UCOR President and CEO Ken Rueter said after the workforce panel discussion on which Hart spoke.
Hart said his union works with its members to secure exemption for those who can get a member of clergy or physician to vouch for that individual’s request not to take the COVID-19 inoculation.
