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Friday, December 14, 2001
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Strike causes test delay

Workers refuse to cross guards' picket line

A two-day strike by security guards for a Defense Department contractor at the secret Groom Lake installation caused officials to delay a nuclear experiment when some Nevada Test Site workers refused to cross the guards' picket line, union and government officials said Thursday.

The subcritical nuclear weapons experiment, dubbed Oboe 7, scheduled to be conducted on Wednesday was successfully detonated on Thursday after being delayed for "operational support issues," according to a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, a branch of the Department of Energy.

The spokesman, Darwin Morgan, said pickets from some of the 70 striking security officers of an independent union showed up Tuesday at the test site's boundary near the Mercury entrance, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Then when buses carrying test site workers arrived, enough workers from a Teamsters local refused to cross the line, affecting final preparations for the Oboe 7 experiment.

Representatives for the independent union, the Security Police Association of Nevada, did not return calls to the Review-Journal on Wednesday or Thursday, nor did the guards' employer, EG&G Technical Services Inc., a Defense Department contractor.

But the guards had abandoned their picket lines late Tuesday at the test site, at EG&G Technical Services offices in Las Vegas, and at Haven Street near McCarran International Airport, where a fleet of nondescript passenger jets routinely takes the guards and other workers to a facility along the Groom dry lake bed, northeast of the test site and 90 miles north of Las Vegas.

The secret installation that the guards refer to only as "nowhere" and "out of town," is widely known as Area 51 and listed in government documents as "Det 3," a detached Air Force unit. The 38,400-acre restricted area is where high-tech U.S. aircraft are tested, according to sources who have worked there and who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Wayne R. King Sr., business agent for Teamsters Local 631, said the guards on Tuesday "threw a picket line across the gate at the Nevada Test Site and many teamsters chose individually not to cross the picket line."

He said the guards went back to work Tuesday night and were scheduled to resume negotiations today. He noted that the Teamsters union cannot sanction the strike by the independent guards' union.

About 75 warehousemen and drivers honored the picket line, representing more than 80 percent of the Teamsters workforce at the test site, King said.

On Monday, Vernell Hall, the guards' union president, said the 70 guards walked off their jobs after three months of negotiations with EG&G Technical Services ended in a stalemate. He cited such reasons for the strike as lack of adequate wages and benefits, and having to work too much overtime since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Attempts to reach Hall for comment Thursday were unsuccessful.

A statement distributed Monday by the Security Police Association of Nevada said the guards fear that EG&G Technical Services "will cease to exist in the near future" through a merger that will form a new company, Integrated Range Support Services. This new company, the statement said, "will be in a position to disregard all previous non-guaranteed contracts."

The guards claim they were faced with a similar situation in 1996, when EG&G Special Projects was restructured into EG&G Technical Services, resulting in a 25 percent reduction in wages and benefits.

"The security officers are not asking for the world or an outlandish pay increase," their statement says. "All we are asking for is the alignment of our pay with the multitude of increased taskings, and to maintain parity with the cost of living."