The Department of Energy’s Amentum-led environmental prime at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee on Wednesday signed a new contract affecting 550 members of North America’s Building Trades Unions at the nuclear property.
United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR) said in a press release the project labor agreement, which covers a quarter of its 2,200-person workforce, will provide a 20% wage increase spread over three years.
The agreement includes a 12% pay increase in the first year and gives craft workers nine paid holidays, according to the release. It also provides a contract ratification bonus and a retention incentive program.
“The signing of this decade-long project labor agreement ensures that in the years to come, our 550 members whom it impacts will not only see the benefit of middle-class sustaining union wages but will be a critical part of our national environmental management clean-up efforts,” said North America’s Building Trades Unions President Sean McGarvey in the press release.
A process for determining future wage increases beginning in 2026 will be established between UCOR and the trade union utilizing both local and regional wage data, a UCOR spokesperson said by email Thursday.
This is the first national project labor agreement negotiated within the DOE under Executive Order 14063, issued by President Joe Biden in February 2022 to ease labor deals at big federal construction projects, according to the UCOR spokesperson. The Knoxville Building and Construction Trades Council and its affiliates helped negotiate the agreement, the spokesperson said.
The North America’s Building Trades Unions labor organization is made up of 14 unions, according to its LinkedIn page.
UCOR hopes the agreement, retroactive to Oct. 1, 2023, will help stabilize its building trades workforce, which has in recent times had a turnover rate of more than 20%, UCOR craft workers, according to the release.
“Without the support of our labor workforce, we would not have successfully completed the first-ever cleanup of a gaseous diffusion plant,” UCOR President and CEO Ken Rueter said in the release.
Workers covered by the deal will continue to remediate old buildings at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 National Security Complex, where contaminated, former uranium processing facilities are being prepared for demolition.
