Sick DOE Workers Exploited by Contractors
In 2003, POGO detailed how a contractor, Science & Engineering Associates (now Apogen Technologies), used its political connections in an attempt to retain a government contract. That contract administered a program compensating former nuclear weapons workers with illnesses that could be linked to exposure to toxic substances while employed at a DOE facility. Now run by the Department of Labor, the troubled program started under DOE's watch.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report (pdf) that details $26.4 million in improper and questionable payments, including:
[B]illings of employees in labor categories for which they were not qualified or that did not reflect the duties they actually performed, the inappropriate use of fully burdened labor rates for subcontracted labor, add-on charges to other direct costs and base fees that were not in accordance with contract terms, and various other direct costs that were improperly paid.
The GAO also found that “certain payments toward the end of the program for furniture and computer equipment may not have been an efficient use of government funds.” Those “improper and questionable payments for contract costs represent nearly 30 percent of the $92 million in total program funds spent through September 30, 2005.”
The silver lining for sick workers is that the DOL is processing claims and paying claimants, albeit at a slow and questionable rate. The bad news for taxpayers is that the contracting problems identified by the GAO are similar to those with Iraq and Katrina contracts, and the government isn’t adequately protecting the $329 billion (pdf) it spends each year on goods and services.
If you missed it, check out the CBS News article and video about workers who are struggling to get paid under the program.
-- Scott Amey
My husband has been sick following cancer for 10 years. Forced retirement 2000. He is now in nursing home... Have 2nd review coming up April 9th. Was a Fireman at ORNL. 4 of his men are dead of cancer below the waist..(his was bladder). and probably more I don't know about as there is "no way to get information"... (that I can find)... He has had blood clots, brain surgery, neuropathy, bladder cancer, melonoma on face, and Basal cell carcinoma of face....We are swamped with bills -- beyond insurance. No one in fire dept. will talk to me.
Does anyone have information on exposure to firemen? I have been contesting the denial for 3 years.... We filed in 2001. I keep finding information and fighting for a favorable claim. He had 3 exposures (DOE says not documented)... was "hot".. and had to patrol burial grounds, all buildings.. and go into White Oak Creek for accident victims. I content this continued DAILY exposure for 27 years is a cumulation of exposure.... AND "What did 5 men get into on same job that they had cancer below the waist.?"
Can anyone help? Jancpd@aol.com
Posted on: Mar 18, 2008 at 10:29 AM
Dear DOE sick workers and advocates,
Some of you know a bit about my story. I responsibly voiced concerns, per my positive legal and ethical obligations as a licensed professional engineer (P.E.) employed as a nuclear safety engineer in DOE, about workplace and public health and safety issues. I experienced significant retribution, as the established legal record shows, for doing so.
DOE and its contractors' employed safety professionals had a positive legal and/or ethical duty to warn workers about the risks they were facing and the inadequate controls of them in DOE facilities, even if it cost them their jobs and careers, by the "codes of ethics" of the safety professions. They generally failed to do so, transferring their risk of their loss of their job to workers in DOE facilities and greatly increasing their risk loss of health and life - "love of money is the root of all evil" as your situations attests.
We all know what would have happened to any DOE project manager who voiced responsibly voiced concerns about the performance of DOE contractors who were supposed to help the DOE sick workers - he/she would likely have been personally and professionally ruined. So these project managers transferred their risk of loss of job for responsibly doing their job to the intended beneficiaries of the EEOICPA, increasing their risk of not receiving the intended benefits in a timely manner or at all. More "love of money."
I put much of the fault for DOE (as other federal employees having to realistically risk loss of job to responsibly do their job to protect others) this at the doorstep of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), which was created to be the linchpin for protecting the merit principles of the federal civil service in 1979 and, because of its poor performance in its first 10 years, given an even more specific charge to do so in 1989 by Congress.
OSC is a systemic, years-long lawbreaking failure. Congress has done no oversight of its primary function of protecting federal employees from reprisal since 1989. Instead, Congress informally outsourced it to so-called "whistleblower advocacy groups" which benefit, in several ways, by OSC being a broken, lawbreaking failure. "Love of money."
Like it or not, OSC's being a lawbreaking failure to protect federal employees continues to hinder your efforts to obtain the relief Congress intended you receive via the EEOICPA Fixing OSC will not fix everything you face. But DOL and NIOSH employees have as much to fear as DOE employees for voicing concerns about the EEOICPA - and why should they risk their jobs for your benefit, when they know OSC will not follow the law to protect them if they stick their necks out for you and Congress does not seem to care about it?
You want the federal gov't employees to demonstrate good faith to you, instead of their "love of money." How about you displaying some good faith to the federal employees you expect to risk their jobs, when necessary, to see you get the benefits you deserve by *DEMANDING - LOUDLY AND REPEATEDLY - that Congress do the necessary oversight of OSC's compliance with law and record in protecting federal employees from reprisal so that Congress fix OSC lawbreaking and can then, for the first time, actually tell a federal employee, based on results of its oversight and fixing of OSC, that if the federal employee responsibly voices concerns about their agency's compliance with the law, that OSC will also follow the law to protect him or her.
I am involved with litigation with OSC, because I was unable to spur any viable Congressional oversight of it. But trying to fix OSC via litigation is like trying to fix a leaky pipe with a screwdriver - Congressional oversight, not judicial review, in the proper tool to find and fix the systemic, persistent, lawbreaking in OSC.
If you are willing to contact Congress and request it do, for the first-time since creating OSC as an independent agency in 1989, oversight of OSC's compliance with law and Congressional intent in protecting federal employees, please let me know. I'll send you a draft letter and contact info for relevant members of Congress.
"insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result." Maybe I'm insane, maybe you are, but I know OSC's lawbreaking is hurting us both - but not hurting the so-called whistleblower advocacy groups or the private sector attorneys who specialize in representing federal employees - and Congress is the proper Constitutional body to stop it.
Respectfully,
Joe Carson, P.E.
("eight-time prevailing" DOE whistleblower)
Knoxville, TN
jpcarson@tds.net
865-300-5831
Posted on: Jul 01, 2006 at 11:08 AM