More than 400 workers at the American Centrifuge Project facilities in Oak Ridge received notices Monday (August 10th 2009) letting them know them they could be laid off in 2 months.
USEC Inc. and Babcock & Wilcox, which have been partners in manufacturing centrifuge machines for a new uranium-enrichment plant under construction in Piketon, Ohio, issued the notices in compliance with the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.
USEC issued WARN notices to about 225 of its employees in Oak Ridge, and B&W issued about 220 notices to its Oak Ridge work force on the project. However, officials from both companies emphasized that those numbers don't necessarily represent the number of layoffs that will occur.
The layoff notices were issued as USEC begins to demobilize construction and manufacturing activities associated with its American Centrifuge Project. The uranium-enrichment plant in Ohio was put on hold because the Department of Energy did not issue the hoped-for $2 billion loan guarantee for the project, although a final review is still pending.
In addition to complying with federal law by giving advance notice of layoffs, Jud Simmons of B&W said it was the fair thing to do for employees while USEC and B&W address exactly which operations will be "continued, adjusted or curtailed" and what Oak Ridge jobs will be needed to support those activities.
"Out of fairness we wanted to let everyone know that (layoffs) is a possibility," he said.
"We sent notices to everybody who has any potential, any possibility, of being laid off," Elizabeth Stuckle of USEC said. About 275 workers at USEC's operations at Piketon also received WARN notices Monday, she said.
As noted before, Stuckle said workers involved in the American Centrifuge research and development effort, particularly value engineering, will be retained in coming months to continue work on the project. USEC still is hoping to obtain a loan guarantee from DOE.
Asked if B&W might have other Oak Ridge jobs available for the centrifuge workers, such as stimulus-funded projects at the nearby Y-12 National Security Complex, which B&W manages in partnership with Bechtel, Simmons said, "We're certainly working hard to find employees as many jobs as possible."
Stuckle said it would probably be mid- to late-September before the exact number of layoffs in Oak Ridge is known.