Volunteers participate at a union organizing event Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024, outside Westinghouse Electric Company’s nuclear fuels plant south of Columbia. About 600 employees at the plant are expected to vote on whether to unionize under the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers. (Provided by the South Carolina Progressive Network)
COLUMBIA — Some 600 workers at a Columbia-area nuclear fuel plant are expected to vote on whether to unionize after filing a petition with the National Labor Relations Board last week.
A group of employees working for the nuclear arm of Westinghouse Electric Company, which employs more than 900 people in a facility near Congaree National Park, has petitioned to join the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers (IBEW) union.
The entrance to the Westinghouse in facility where workers will vote on whether to unionize. (Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette)
IBEW has 820,000 active members and retirees working in the utilities, construction, telecommunications, broadcasting, manufacturing and railroad industry. The union has about 600 chapters, known as locals, operating in all 50 states, according to the union’s directory .