The labor group representing some 1,450 workers at the Department of Energy’s Y-12 National Security Complex last week struck a new five-year labor deal with the Tennessee site’s Bechtel National-led manager.
Members of the Atomic Trades and Labor Council (ATLC), an umbrella organization covering between 15 and 20 individual unions, ratified the agreement June 18. The previous labor agreement was to expire on Monday.
A spokesperson for Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS), the National Nuclear Security Administration’s prime contractor for both Y-12 and the Pantex Plant in Texas, said “management is pleased discussions between the two parties have resulted in a new labor agreement and recognizes the ATLC membership’s important contributions to Y-12 and national security.”
Details of the agreement were not immediately available.
The Y-12 labor group reached terms on a new deal a little more than a year after the Amarillo Metal Trade Council settled on a new five-year contract for workers at the Pantex Plant. That February 2019 deal covered roughly 1,200 employees at the NNSA’s main nuclear weapons service center.
The National Nuclear Security Administration is still deciding whether to pick up a two-year option that would keep CNS on the job at Y-12 and Pantex through September 30, 2023. The agency said it would decide the contractor’s fate this month. In 2018, the agency picked up the first two-year option on the contrat, which keeps the company on the job until Sept. 30 of this year.
Overall, the contract is worth about $2 billion annually. Work started in 2014 and could continue into 2024, under a one-year option. Y-12 makes the uranium-fueled secondary stages of nuclear weapons. Under contract to CNS, Bechtel National is building the Uranium Processing Facility at the site. The multi-building facility is scheduled to take over secondary stage manufacturing and associated functions from the aging Building 9212 later this decade.
