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Dealing With DOE Hazards
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Magnu-@aol.com
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Aug 23, 2009 03:14 PDT
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_http://www.metropulse.com/news/2009/aug/19/dealing-doe-hazards/_
(http://www.metropulse.com/news/2009/aug/19/dealing-doe-hazards/)
Dealing With DOE Hazards
Metro Pulse
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Regarding your recent article on Joe Carson, the DOE whistleblower: Some
people go along with whatever they are told to do at work; some put up with
it as long as they can and then leave; and a very few, like Joe, stand their
ground and stay in their jobs, trying to change things. [“The Curious Case
of Joe Carson—Whistleblower,” cover story by Chris Barrett, July 23,
2009]
I myself was a whistleblower. As a health physicist and radiological
engineer, I reported radiation protection violations and concerns up the chain
of command at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for years, including to some
field DOE people, to no avail. My radiological engineering group and I were
harassed and retaliated against repeatedly while the rad protection procedures
were dumbed down alarmingly. Our management went along with it because as
my division director told me, if we didn’t, operational management would
outsource our work and we would lose our jobs. A DOE safety person told me
that his hands were tied by orders from on high—he could look at only blatant
violations. In 2000 I finally went to local DOE headquarters and submitted
a complaint about the safety problems and the retaliations. I was laid off
shortly afterward.
This mass layoff was supposedly for financial reasons, but the safety and
health people were laid off at a much higher rate than the operational and
administrative people. This sent a message about what the remaining folks
would have to do to keep their jobs. I had been personally targeted in the
layoff, as documents later showed: I had reported at length about the
problems to the manager who personally chose the layoffees. The one retained
person in my group was the least senior and least experienced, but operational
people preferred him because he played ball with them.
I pursued a case in the DOE whistleblower system. Metro Pulse wrote about
it in 2002, interviewing me and my lawyer, Margaret Held. We won the case,
which went all the way up to the Secretary of Energy. To forestall a
DOE-embarrassing appeal to the court of appeals by the contractor, DOE pressured
us to settle. I received a reduced settlement in return for no
confidentiality clause—I wanted to be able to write about all that had happened. (My
book about the case is posted on the Internet; just Google me.) I did not ask
for my job back; at the settlement meeting, the contractor reps said my job
had disappeared and they would “have to find something for you to do.”
This was in front of the Washington facilitator, a DOE lawyer who knew it was
illegal for them to say that but who did not object. So I knew I would not
be allowed to do any real rad protection work and DOE would not protect
me.
Metro Pulse readers should know that they as taxpayers paid for half my
settlement, or about $140,000, as a FOIA request showed. I believe that DOE
also paid the contractor’s legal fees, although these are not supposed to be
chargeable to DOE unless the contractor wins. The plaintiff, of course,
pays his own fees.
Like Joe, I found that DOE provides no support to the plaintiff. DOE
allegedly does not take sides and therefore could not help me by providing
documents or aiding discovery on my case, even though safety issues were
involved. Meanwhile, the contractor had DOE’s ear at all times.
In the whistleblower hearing, my manager testified that he had a sheaf of
E-mail messages and telephone notes complaining about me, but he could not
produce them. My brave supervisor testified that there had also been various
messages praising my work. A courageous colleague from a criticality group
testified favorably about my work and described retaliation against him by
one of the same operational groups that had retaliated against me.
The last time I saw Joe, years ago, he told me that he did have some real
work to do. But it seems clear that Joe has not had the career he might
otherwise have had, which is true of me, too. I eventually got another
full-time job, but it was on the national sick worker compensation project
(EEOICPA), where I was not affecting the health or safety of any living person. I
worked there for 4.5 years, until the government down-funded the project in
2006 and my whole group was laid off. I haven’t been able to find another
job in my field; I say that it may be because of my age, but deep down I
think it is because I am wearing the scarlet letter W. I am a successful tutor
of college and high school students, but it is a marginal living.
DOE’s actual attitude toward health and safety whistleblowers is clearly
revealed in Joe’s and my cases. DOE likes to blame any adverse safety impacts
on culture problems with the contractors, but DOE needs to clean its own
house first. DOE talks the talk, but they don’t walk the walk by making
strong rules and consistently enforcing them.
To those who think that whistleblowers are just another species of rat, I
ask, if you were a worker who was dealing with hazards, who would you want
to examine the safety and health aspects of your facility and your job: Joe
and me or some of those “go along to get along” guys?
Janet Westbrook
Oak Ridge
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