Workers facing layoffs at test site
More than 200 workers for the Nevada Test Site’s prime contractor probably will be laid off by next month along with thousands of others in the nation’s nuclear weapons complex as the Department of Energy grapples with budget cuts expected from Congress.
Steve Younger, president of National Security Technologies, or NSTec, which holds the test site’s contract for DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration, met Monday with many of the company’s 2,800 employees to discuss what he anticipates will be a $20 million shortfall.
“I told them we’re facing budget uncertainties and that we expect to lose at least 200 people,” Younger said after returning from the test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, to meet with workers at the company’s North Las Vegas offices.
He said the test site’s $500 million budget from a continuing resolution is expected to be lopped by $20 million when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1. Congress won’t have a new energy spending bill approved due to differences in the House and Senate versions. Energy Department officials expect that the House version, which has the biggest cuts for the National Nuclear Security Administration, will be the one they have to follow.
Funding in the House bill for the National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages the weapons complex, is $8.787 billion for 2008. That is a cut of $599.9 million from the Bush administration’s budget request and $294 million below what is being spent this year.
Younger said every site in the nuclear weapons complex including national laboratories in California and New Mexico that use the test site will be affected by worker cutbacks.
“We’re going to spread them across the company. We don’t want to hit any one group unnecessarily hard,” he said, noting that reductions in the work force will range from office assistants to scientists.
Out of the company’s 2,806 full- and part-time employees, 2,387 are in Nevada. The remainder work at the national labs or at Nellis and Andrews Air Force bases.
In a written message to employees Thursday, Younger said he hopes some of the $20 million could be recovered and that “senior management has worked intensely with NNSA and with our congressional delegation to make that happen. … However, without money in the coming year, we simply cannot keep everyone on board.”
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said lawmakers with Energy Department installations in their districts are seeking ways to ease the threat of layoffs, although she acknowledged that time may be short.
“At this point we are just planning for any eventuality because nothing has happened yet,” she said.
The problem is that it does not appear Congress will finish an energy spending bill by Oct. 1, the beginning of the new fiscal year.
While the House has acted, the Senate has not.
In that case, Berkley said, the Energy Department probably would be funded for at least part of the new fiscal year, and perhaps for the entire year, with the amounts in the House-passed bill.
“And that bill does cut funding,” Berkley said.
Jon Summers, a spokesman for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the senator “is meeting with the Energy Department next week. He is looking for solutions to restore funding for the test site to its original levels to minimize or eliminate the threat of layoffs.”
No layoffs are planned for the 100 NNSA employees at the agency’s Nevada Site Office, an agency spokesman said.
Younger said he expects NSTec workers will experience “great anxiety” in the face of layoffs. “They are, of course, worried,” he said.