Fluor Daniel expects to lay off fewer than 500 workers in 1998.

How many fewer is uncertain.

Also uncertain is when the layoffs would occur and how they would be spread out.

One thing that is certain is the 60 days advance notice that was given to laid-off Hanford workers in the past will be trimmed to two weeks.

Among other major Hanford contractors, Battelle-Northwest is expecting to add a few workers over the year, while Bechtel remains uncertain because its budget is not yet firm.

Fluor sent its work force restructuring plan to the Department of Energy this week.

It addresses expected work needs, attrition predictions, possible new hirings, layoffs, efficiency measures, available funds and skills needed for fiscal 1998, which began Oct. 1.

Such a plan is required if a year's layoffs are expected to exceed 100.

Fluor and DOE Richland officials are expected to go to DOE's Washington, D.C., headquarters next week to discuss the plan.

"We anticipate the plan will be approved in the next few weeks," wrote Hank Hatch, Fluor Daniel Hanford president, in a memo to Fluor team employees Friday.

"I don't have a final figure for fiscal year 1998 reductions. The current plan being reviewed states that fewer than 500 (Fluor core team) employees will be subject to an involuntary reduction of force throughout the course of the year," Hatch wrote.

The "fewer than 500" figure reflects earlier Fluor pronouncements on how many jobs might be cut in 1998.

Hatch also wrote the "job uncertainties are distracting and stressful" and that updated information would be sent to workers as soon as possible.

The restructuring plan addresses employees in Fluor Daniel Hanford and its six main "inside-the-fence" subcontractors, said Gordon Beecher, Fluor's director of human resources.

Beecher said work changes, layoffs and restructuring within the inside-the-fence companies also could affect the site's six spinoff "enterprise" companies, since most of their work is Hanford-related.

However, Fluor Daniel Hanford's restructuring plans did not specifically address what the ripple effect might be, he said. Those calculations are up to the six enterprise companies individually, he said.

In September, the seven inside-the-fence companies employed 5,547 people and the six enterprise companies employed 2,058.

A new wrinkle with the 1998 layoffs is that workers will get two weeks notice instead of 60 days before layoffs.

For the past three years, Hanford employees received 60 days notice.

Federal law requires the 60-day notices on mass layoffs by government contractors in certain situations - including when layoffs number at least 500 or one-third of the total work force.

The "fewer than 500" expectation in 1998 does not meet that criteria, which brings in the corporate notification period of at least two weeks, said Beecher and Dom Sansotta, DOE manager for contractor work force programs.

Through layoffs and attrition, Hanford eliminated about 6,000 jobs since 1994 - in large and small groups.

During that time, whenever layoffs occurred in numbers smaller than what would trigger the 60-day notification, DOE opted to keep the 60-day requirement for consistency, Sansotta said.

However, DOE is not opting to continue that practice.

Sansotta said productivity of workers facing termination often fell drastically during those final 60 days and that also affected fellow employees.

Also, while general numbers of layoffs can be predicted 60 days in advance, it is difficult to pinpoint which individuals will be laid off more than a few weeks in advance, Sansotta said.

Jim Watts, president of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union local serving Hanford, said his union will resist the switch to two weeks notification.

At Hanford's other primary contractors:

Battelle-Northwest, which operates the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, expects a "slight" increase in its work force in 1998, said Battelle spokesman Greg Koller.

A few people may be laid off as individual projects finish, but growth in Battelle's national security and nongovernment programs is expected to lead to an overall increase, Koller said. He declined to speculate on actual numbers.

Battelle employed about 3,300 people in Richland in September.

Bechtel Hanford Inc. is waiting to see how the site's environmental restoration budget will shape up before predicting how many of its roughly 970 workers may be laid off in 1998.

The worst-case scenario predicts 220 Bechtel layoffs by Sept. 30, 1998.

Congress allocated extra money to Bechtel-run programs for 1998. However, some yet-undetermined sitewide budget cuts have not been nailed down yet. Consequently, DOE and Bechtel don't know yet what Bechtel's fiscal 1998 budget will be, which will determine actual layoff numbers.