Members of United Steelworkers Local 1-689 employed in cleanup at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio voted Monday to extend their existing collective bargaining deal with Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth until March, a union official said.
The extension includes a retroactive 2% raise, a $1,500 cash bonus and buys time until a new Amentum-led team takes over as the site’s cleanup contractor, said Herman Potter, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1-689.
DOE wants to transition the Portsmouth contract, and a separate contract at the Paducah site in Kentucky, over to new management at roughly the same time. Both deals were set to expire Sept. 30, under extension DOE awarded in March. The agency has not said if transition will begin then.
Local 1-689’s new deal at Portsmouth “will last till March 29, 2024,” Potter said in a Wednesday email reply to Exchange Monitor. The union representative declined to reveal the vote tally.
Local 1-689’s previous two-year extension with the Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth expired March 29 and members continued to work without a new agreement.
“We convinced our members that it would be in their best interest to ratify so we can get busy on the transition contract,” Potter said.
DOE’s Office of Environmental Management has signaled it could be awhile before Southern Ohio Cleanup Co., the joint venture of Amentum, Fluor and Cavendish Nuclear USA starts work on the decade-long cleanup contract the company won in July. With options, the deal is worth $5.87-billion.
When DOE announced the award Southern Ohio Cleanup Co., the agency said it wanted a smooth transition that aligns with another big award, the Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office (PPPO) Operations and Site Mission Support Contract.
“We are expecting that around the first of October but who knows,” Potter said via email.
The potential $2.9-billion operations and support contract for Portsmouth and the Paducah Site in Kentucky will absorb work currently done under the depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion plant contract held by Atkins-led Mid America Conversion Services, along with certain operations work currently done by Fluor-BWXT.
