Members of Hanford Guards Union Local 21 want to quickly end a lockout initiated last week by the landlord contractor at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, a union official said Monday.
Local 21 President Chris Hall told Exchange Monitor by phone the guards sought to keep working during contract talks with Leidos-led Hanford Mission Integration Solutions (HMIS). But HMIS refused and locked out the unionized guards when the latest contract extension expired Nov. 27, the day before Thanksgiving, Hall said.
“HMIS continues to negotiate in good faith with the Hanford Guards Union with the presence of a federal mediator,” an HMIS spokesperson said by email Monday afternoon. “The original contract expired on Nov. 1 and has been extended three times before expiring on Nov. 27.”
As of shortly before 11 a.m. Pacific Time Monday, Hall said union and HMIS were in separate rooms with a federal mediator ferrying information back-and-forth between the parties.
In addition to getting members back to work soon, the Hanford Guards Union is seeking “medical autonomy,” Hall said. This means the armed security patrol guards want to make up their own minds about taking future vaccines or medical treatments, he added.
Scores of Hanford guards signed onto an unsuccessful legal challenge stemming from COVID vaccination requirements at Hanford a couple of years ago. With the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, DOE stopped asking federal and contract workers to reveal their vaccination status. The union wants to avoid similar future mandates, whether from “monkeypox,” now known as mpox, or something else, Hall said.
HMIS wanted the union to take action on a modified contract proposal submitted to the guards Nov. 25, Hall said. The union official said the company’s offer last week too closely resembled a proposal rejected by about 99% of the Hanford guards the week before.
“We have never done this” at Hanford before, Hall said, adding that Hanford contractors have typically kept union members on the job when an existing agreement expires. It is important to “get the body back to work,” Hall said.
Since Nov. 27, HMIS used a “skeleton crew” of former-guards-turned supervisors already based at Hanford, as well as other salaried personnel brought in from elsewhere in the DOE complex, Hall said. The number of union guard members affected by the current contract talks is in “triple digits,” he said.
The HMIS spokesperson said about two-thirds of Hanford Patrol are members of the union’s bargaining unit but the other third are salaried employees. All personnel being brought in to make up for the union members are salaried DOE-certified security police officers, the contractor spokesperson said.
