Radford Army Ammunition Plant welcoming back all its employees Monday

RADFORD, Va. ( WFXR ) – The Radford Army Ammunition Plant has been out of commission since Hurricane Helene caused major flood damage to the facility. During that time, 800 employees were out of work for some time.

Currently, 200 workers are still absent from the plant, but that will change on Monday when everyone returns.

“I got called yesterday by (Human Resources) at BAE, and everyone should be coming back to work Monday,” Larry Riffey, the president of the United Steelworkers Local 8-495, and former employee at the plant, said. “They got the equipment back up and running.”

Furloughed employees were notified Tuesday and Wednesday morning of the plan, and they also got news they would receive unemployment pay.

For the quarter of the staff that has missed the last three weeks of work, that helps lift a lot of uncertainty from their heads.

“When you have 800 people out of work, everybody is wondering when,” Riffey said. “When are we going back, how long are we going to be off, are we going to get unemployment, and how are we going to finance everything?”

Workers at the plant had two different places to receive their unemployment. One was at the center in Radford next to the Virginia ABC, and the other was at the FEMA disaster recovery center at the fairgrounds in Dublin.

A FEMA worker said the majority of the people showing up at the center Wednesday were there to get unemployment. One employee at the plant; however, was struggling to get his to work.

“I have been getting a runaround with (Virginia) unemployment because I live in West Virginia,” Ken Doland, a furloughed worker at the plant, said. “Their website says where I live in West Virginia I can’t file, but (FEMA is) claiming there’s some kind of green button on top of their website to ID me.”

Doland traveled an hour to try and get his check. While he’s happy to return to work, he knows his first paycheck isn’t around the corner.

“We’ve been off for so long, and I’m still not going to get another paycheck until two weeks from now.”

Doland said money is tight in his household at the moment.

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