Local 150 recently welcomed aboard 56 nuclear techs at Entergy Palisades Power Plant in Covert, MI, who voted to join their brothers and sisters in the facility who are already UWUA members. “We’re very excited to have them onboard,” says Local 150 President Bob Ritsema.

“The operations, mechanics and electricians have always been with Local 150, but the radiation protection, instruments and calibration, and chemistry groups were not,” says Asa Wallace, a radiation protection technician who has been with the company since 2005.

‘We need it in writing’

“The company began taking things away, such as night shift premiums. Used to be, if we worked more than 50 hours a week, we would be paid double rate. It was never written down but had been in place for several years,” explains Wallace. That ceased in January.

“I think the thing that really motivated people was when the company recently issued a completely new pay policy; it wasn’t even on company letterhead. When we went to meetings about it and asked specific questions about our pay, they couldn’t answer our questions,” says Wallace. “We needed something written down, a legally binding contract.”

George Stieber, a power plant operator and a UWUA member for 23 years, was instrumental in getting the techs to unionize. “I was approached by a Senior Instrument and Control Technician (I & C Tech) a little over a year ago concerning organizing with the UWUA,” says Stieber.

“The technicians felt that they were being treated like second class citizens. Promises made to them were being broken,” continues Stieber. “The company had begun implementing policies and procedures that they have at the non-union plants. The technicians were fed up with not having a voice in their working conditions, salaries and benefits. One chemistry technician was told by a supervisor that their promotion could be held up if the organizing drive was successful.”

Union Brings Power

“After this, things moved fairly quickly,” says Russell Clock, a chemistry technician with Entergy for 25 years, who observed the voting on April 27. “I haven’t been treated too bad but I’ve seen other technicians not get a raise, there’s been favoritism...people that were iffy before said ‘yes’ this time. I feel good now; once we have a contract in place, we’ll have our pay rates in writing. ”

“I’ve always been pro-union, my dad was in a union. It could be said that people owe their middle class standing thanks to unions,” says Jim Rikle, an I & C technician at the plant. “Things would be better in the long term for us to be part of a union, to have guaranteed bargaining power.” Chad Langford, an electrical repairman with the FIN department and chief steward for the plant for the past four-and-a-half years, is thrilled that the nuclear technicians are now unionized. “The company was doing a pretty good job of union bashing,” he says. “I was the guy on the inside, helping to get these guys what they needed, trying to keep them positive. ” President Ritsema is now eager to help the technicians negotiate their first contract.