Nine Mile workers went on strike Friday night (midnight) after the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 97 members voted 425-49 on Thursday to reject Constellation Energy Nuclear Group’s contract offer primarily because of concerns about changes in the pension plan for future retirees, union negotiator Martin Currier said.
The union and Constellation’s negotiators met again Friday with a mediator at a conference room at the Homewood Suites hotel in Salina. Constellation officials said during the session that the rejected contract was the company’s last and best offer, Skerpon said. He said the meeting ended after about 15 minutes.
At midnight Friday, when a shift ended at Nine Mile Point Unit 1 and Unit 2, Constellation Energy Nuclear Group managers relieved union co-workers at desks throughout the plants.
The Local 97 called for 460 workers to go on strike in the plants owned by CENG after a final contract negotiating session lasted just minutes Friday morning. At the shift ended at Nine Mile Point Unit 1 and Unit 2, Constellation Energy Nuclear Group managers relieved union co-workers at desks throughout the plants.
CENG will temporarily run the two reactors in Scriba, NY with management workers, said Jill Lyon, a company spokeswoman. “… We are prepared to safely run the facility,” Lyon said in a statement issued hours before the company’s contract with the IBEW expired.
Lyon said the company’s proposal included a 13.6 percent wage increase over five years, beginning with a 3 percent raise in the first year. She said CENG proposed changes to one of the two pension plans that cover represented workers.
Local 97 represents 590 of the roughly 1,000 workers at the plant, including control-room operators, radiation-protection personnel, emergency-response workers and others, said Theodore Skerpon, Local 97 president. About 460 of the workers will be on strike. IBEW-represented security officers are not permitted to strike.
CENG has spent the past year devising its contingency plan and training managers to step in if necessary, Lyon said.
Skerpon said the union does not believe management workers have been sufficiently trained. “These management personnel haven’t been doing hands-on work like my members have,” he said.
CENG purchased the plants for $762 million from Niagara Mohawk Power Corp. in 2001.
The last strike at a nuclear plant in the Northeast occurred in 2003 at Oyster Creek, N.J., where more than 200 workers walked off the job when contract talks broke down. The strike lasted about 11 weeks.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent three extra inspectors to Scriba to monitor the two nuclear plants around the clock from inside their control rooms during the first 48 hours of the strike, an NRC spokesman said. After that, inspectors will remain on-site 24 hours a day for the next couple of weeks to make sure things are going smoothly, said Diane Screnci, speaking for the NRC.
Screnci said the NRC has reviewed the company’s plans for operating the plants during the strike and is satisfied that its replacement operators can operate them safely.