Hanford Contractors Will Cut Jobs, Hand Out Pink Slips

Three contractors at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation announced Wednesday they would eliminate a combined 660 jobs, most by laying off workers.

These layoffs and voluntary resignations will bring the total job reduction at Westinghouse Hanford Co., ICF Kaiser Hanford Co. and Boeing Computer Services Richland to 2,700, or 56 percent of 4,800 anticipated job losses from throughout the federal site. Six hundred more workers will be laid off by these contractors later this year.

The U.S. Department of Energy approved the layoff program late Tuesday. The 500 workers who get “pink slips” will be paid for 60 days, but most will be gone from the site by Friday.

The rest of the cut will come from volunteers whose job categories were excluded from the previous program, Westinghouse officials said.

“It is essential that we at Westinghouse Hanford Co. get on with conducting our programs and meeting our milestones. But it is also essential that people leaving our payroll be given the opportunity to get out and find work as fast as they can,” said Westinghouse President LaMar Trego.

The 1,500 difference between the 3,300 job losses for Westinghouse and its partners and the 4,800 that the DOE has said must be eliminated will come from Battelle-Northwest, Bechtel Hanford Co., the Hanford Environmental Health Foundation and subcontractors.

Battelle employees have until Friday to accept an early retirement program. Its voluntary reduction program will end April 30. If those two programs combined don’t total 900, layoffs will start at Battelle, said spokesman Greg Koller.

Bechtel Hanford, meanwhile, expects to have reduced its work force from 830 last fall to 520 by the end of July, said spokesman John Schlatter. That total includes 130 employees who already quit or retired, 80 who are to be laid off in May and an additional 100 in July. Like Battelle, Bechtel’s involuntary reduction program has yet to be approved by the DOE.

All the planned reductions have been moved ahead to compensate for anticipated 1996 budget reductions and cuts to the current budget, said DOE spokesman Guy Schein.

Peak employment at Hanford in 1994 was 18,500.

“I’d like to say that this will be the last reduction in our work force but I can’t,” Trego said.

“We simply can’t predict the future. While additional budget reductions may occur, it is my belief that we will now be appropriately positioned to deal with the current budget projections … without the need for further layoffs.”