Electrical workers at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in central New Jersey have gone on strike, adding another woe to a troubled week for one of the nation's oldest nuclear-generating stations.
The walkout, by 215 of the plant's 450 workers, started abruptly just before noon on Thursday after weeks of fruitless negotiations over old work rules, staff reductions and employee benefits.
Two days before the strike, Oyster Creek was forced to stop producing electricity after a cable failure knocked out power to about half the plant's safety system, including security cameras, alarms, sensors, pumps and valves, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Makeshift repairs restored the power, but Oyster Creek is barred from generating power until a new cable is installed, said Neil Sheehan, a commission spokesman.
For a plant that is ostensibly shut down, Oyster Creek bustled with activity yesterday. Members of the striking union, Local 1289 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, picketed at three of the four entrances. The plant's owner, the AmerGen Energy Company, of Chicago, continued importing management officials and supervisory workers from some of its nine other nuclear plants around the country to replace the striking workers.
Police officers from Lacey Township, where Oyster Creek is situated, stood by outside the gates to prevent any clashes between the two groups.
Posted inside the gates were New Jersey National Guard troops on regular antiterrorist watch along with plant security guards.
Teams of inspectors from the regulatory commission roamed inside the plant, overseeing repairs to the cable, reviewing the plant's strike-contingency plan and monitoring replacement workers and managers.
"They're ensuring the plant is safely operated while the walkout is going on," Mr. Sheehan said of some of the inspectors. "They're using their own managers and people from other plants to fill in, and people are performing tasks they don't regularly perform."
Mr. Sheehan attributed the cable's failure to old age.
Plant safety now and after the strike ends seemed a preoccupation yesterday. Workers on the picket line questioned whether the substitute workers would be able to resume production of electricity after the cable was replaced.
The plant's vice president, Ernest J. Harkness, expressed confidence during a news conference that operations would resume safely, possibly within a week. Both he and Craig Nesbit, a spokesman for AmerGen, said the walkout posed no safety or security risks.
The strike comes about two months after AmerGen abandoned a six-month effort to sell Oyster Creek, which opened in 1969 and is one of the nation's smallest commercial generators. Mr. Nesbit said that bids it had received were too low, and that the company now wanted to make the plant "efficient and competitive."
The labor contract expired last October and was extended until the end of January. After months of stalled bargaining, the company imposed a new contract on April 14. On Thursday, the National Labor Relations Board rejected the union's complaint that the contract was unfair.
Both sides agreed that a main stumbling block was reduction in the plant's work force. Edward Stroup, the president of Local 1289, said the company wanted to lay off nearly 15 percent of unionized workers.
Mr. Harkness, the vice president, declined to discuss a specific figure. He noted that AmerGen had reduced the work force to 450 from 850 since buying the plant in 2000. Only 40 were union workers, he said. Now, he said, management wanted flexibility to lay off union workers and have others work several jobs.
Among other things, the striking workers operate Oyster Creek's nuclear reactor, monitor and repair the plant's various gauges and dials, and ensure that workers are not exposed to dangerous levels of radiation inside the plant.
Mr. Stroup said that the union workers were highly trained and that all were critically needed to run a nuclear plant. He said the jobs were too specialized to permit a worker to shift safely between jobs.
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