Steam vents from cooling towers at Georgia Power Co.’s Plant Vogtle nuclear power plant Friday, Jan. 20, 2023, in Waynesboro, Georgia. The facility, where Westinghouse is completing work on the first new reactors from scratch in the U.S. in decades, has union labor with the IBEW.
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.