Workers At The U.S.’s Largest Nuclear-Fuel Factory Plan To Unionize

Amid growing demand at the factory assembling the uranium fuel rods that provide 10% of U.S. electricity, workers have some demands of their own.

Workers at the United States’ largest factory for assembling the fuel rods used in nuclear reactors are attempting to unionize.

Nearly 700 employees at the Columbia Fuel Fabrication Facility, located 25 minutes southeast of Columbia, South Carolina, are set to vote on whether to form a union represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). The election is scheduled for Feb. 29, March 1 and March 2.

The IBEW filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) late last month requesting a union election. More than half of 673 eligible employees have already signed cards pledging to support the organizing drive, HuffPost has learned. The plant has a total workforce of nearly 900.

The union push marks the second attempt in the past few years to rally the plant’s workers to collectively bargain a contract. That the facility isn’t already unionized is rather unusual for the nuclear power industry.

Just 6% of employees in the U.S. private sector are represented by unions. But more than a third of workers in the nuclear energy industry are organized, according to a 2017 survey conducted by the IBEW, resulting in wages that typically exceed those in renewable energy or fossil fuels. That number has stayed mostly flat — or possibly declined — as nuclear power plants shut down in recent years and laid off workers. But South Carolina has long had the lowest rate of unionization in the nation — a streak U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data confirmed again last month — thanks to laws that favor employers over workers.