The labor union for TVA’s nuclear security guards sued the federal utility today for refusing to bargain with the union after switching the guards at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant from a contract employer to TVA’s payroll.

The United Government Security Officers of America and its Local 22 affiliate filed the lawsuit in federal court in Knoxville after TVA hired virtually all of the contract guards at Browns Ferry but initially refused to bargain with the employees’ union about the change.

Last week, TVA began phasing out its contract with Pinkerton Government Services and bringing nearly all of the contract guards onto TVA’s own payroll at Browns Ferry. Similar transitions are planned over the next month at TVA’s Sequoyah and Watts Bar nuclear plants.

In its lawsuit, the union claims TVA is not negotiating with the Government Security Officers of America as required of successor employers.

“We’re asking the TVA to play by the rules that govern all employers,” the union’s general counsel, John A. Tucker, said in a prepared statement today. “They shouldn’t be allowed to undermine the rights the officers had of security officers employed at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant.”

TVA announced last fall it was ending its Pinkerton security contract and bringing the nearly 500 guards at the Browns Ferry, Sequoyah and Watts Bar nuclear plants under TVA employment this summer. The move comes a decade after TVA contracted out the nuclear security staff to Pinkerton.

“The TVA is playing a 10-year shuffle, contracting out its security officers, then bringing them back in-house,” said James Carney, the international president of for the guards union. “It is a shell game being done intentionally as a way to bust wages, cut benefits and suppress any gains the security officers have made.”