Two contractors at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio are expected to send home dozens of union employees this week with plans to fire them for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19, a local United Steelworkers president at the site said Tuesday in a press release.
To this, a spokesperson for remediation contractor Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth said in a Thursday morning email no one has been terminated yet, and the company is “laser-focused on vaccinating our workforce ahead of deadlines established by the federal government” and the Fluor-BWXT team.
“A vast majority of employees at the Portsmouth site have chosen to be vaccinated to protect their families and colleagues from this pandemic” and management is encouraging others to take the shot, said the Fluor-BWXT spokesperson, who declined to provide any numbers.
Potentially, 50 United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1-689 members will be sent home from work by Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth and Mid-America Conversion Services “with the expectation to be released from employment,” the local president Herman Potter announced in the release.
The 50 employees cited in the press release is less than the 100 Potter had suggested Nov. 12. The companies’ actions come despite the union’s request that the vaccine orders be pushed back until Jan. 4 for the contract workers at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant complex in Pike County, Ohio, according to the USW official.
Mid-America is going with a Dec. 8 deadline for its contractor and subcontractor employees to be fully vaccinated, according to a document posted on the website for the Atkins-led team in charge of depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion plants at the DOE sites near Paducah, Ky., and Piketon, Ohio.
“The USW had requested that the contractors follow the task force guidelines and push back the implementation of the vaccine mandate to January 4, 2022,” according to the statement from the union local, apparently alluding to the latest guidance, issued Nov. 10, from the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force on COVID-19 Workplace Safety. The latest task force update gives contractors until Jan. 18 to be “fully vaccinated,” which means receiving the final shot by Jan. 4, 2022.
Pushing the deadline back to early January would provide “more time to properly educate the members on the various vaccines” or alternatively give them more time to gather documents supporting potential medical or religious exemptions, according to the USW release.
Affected workers were to be sent home starting Wednesday, the union said.
A spokesperson for Atkins declined comment on Mid-America status.
The policy tussle over vaccine mandates for federal contractor employees, and how to handle those who refuse to be inoculated, has already moved into the legal arena at sites such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Hanford Site in Washington state.
