The Knoxville News Sentinel
June 22, 2005


http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/national/article/0,1406,KNS_350_3873160,00.html

Labor Department starts compensation meetings
By HILARY ROXE, Associated Press
June 22, 2005


WASHINGTON - By the time Janet Michel moved her office out of a
contaminated building at the nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, she says her
body was poisoned from nickel and mercury.
Michel was a white-collar worker, but she said her office was stationed on
a former shop floor in K-25, a uranium enrichment plant in the Oak Ridge
complex. She believes toxic materials used at the site left her with a host
of medical problems.

Michel, a member of a workers' advocacy group, hoped to be at meetings the
Labor Department will hold today in Oak Ridge to explain the new rules
guiding a federal compensation program for former nuclear weapons workers.

Similar meetings are scheduled in more than a dozen states through
November, including two in Paducah, Ky., in September. Most of the people
covered by the program worked at facilities in Tennessee, Colorado, Idaho,
Iowa, Kentucky, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina and Washington state.

The compensation program is one of two designed to pay workers who got sick
while helping to build Cold War-era bombs or to clean up the waste left
behind.

Earlier this year, officials began giving lump-sum checks of $125,000 to
survivors of workers who died from job-related illnesses, paying out about
$63 million for more than 500 claims. But living workers, who can receive
up to $250,000 through the program, had to wait until officials developed a
payout formula that accounts for permanent impairments and lost wages.

Shelby Hallmark, who heads the Labor Department's worker compensation
programs, said officials hope to hand out checks by September. "As long as
there aren't payments made, people scratch their head and say, 'I'll
believe it when I see it,' " he said.

Congress last year gave the Labor Department authority over the revamped
program after lawmakers criticized how the Energy Department was managing it.

Though advocates said the new regulations don't reflect lawmakers' intent,
Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., disagreed.

"The rules ... reflect the exact legislation that we passed - and I know
because I wrote the legislation," he said.

But advocates point to potential problems.

"Almost every page of this regulation has something that we disagree with,"
said Harry Williams, a former Oak Ridge security guard.

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