PRESS RELEASE

White Paper Highlights Flaws in DOE's Plan to Fix

Federal Workers' Compensation Program

For Release: February 25, 2004

Contacts: Harry Williams, Coalition for a Healthy

Environment, Oak Ridge, TN 865-693-7249

Denise Brock, United Nuclear Weapons Workers, St.

Louis, MO 636-366-4428

Terrie Barrie, Grassroots Organization of Sick

Workers, Craig, CO 970-824-2260

Oak Ridge, TN. -- The Alliance of Nuclear Worker

Advocacy Groups (ANWAG) announces the release of it’s

white paper denouncing the Department of Energy's plan

("EEOICPA Part D Path Forward") to repair its program

to process claims under the Energy Employees

Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000

(EEOICPA). The EEOICPA was passed to compensate

workers for illnesses that arose out of exposure to

toxic substances at DOE nuclear sites. DOE was

assigned responsibility to implement several parts of

the law, including Subtitle D, which has had major

problems. DOE has processed less than 1% of the 22,600

claims it has received. Statistics as of February 13,

2004 show that only 217 have been processed with 95

decisions positive and 122 negative. It appears that

DOE is waiting until all claimants have died so that

they will not have to spend a dime.

"It has been 40 months since the EEOICPA was enacted

on a bipartisan basis, but DOE has produced little

more than requests for more money to fund an under

qualified contractor to process claims, and a passel

of excuses on why claims are not being processed as

effectively as the Department of Labor," stated Terrie

Barrie, ANWAG’s Press Coordinator. DOE's "Path

Forward" is a step backwards from the perspective of

the claimants, because it represents the ramping up of

a flawed claims processing program and offers no real

reforms to assure a payor for valid claims."

"DOE has had plenty of time to do the job correctly

and has failed. The time for changing the operations

of this program from DOE to DOL is NOW," said Harry

Williams of CHE, based in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. "One

of the problems with the program is that DOE's claims

processing contractor, Science Engineering Associates,

Inc. (SEA)--which has been provided over $20 million

so far through a non-competitive contract--but has no

experience in workers' compensation claims

development. DOE plan calls for rewarding SEA's

underperformance by extending their contract with

another $30-50 million, and allowing them to hire more

case managers to process claims in a system DOE's

consultant (Hays) found to suffer from "design flaws.

There is an inherent flaw in the EEOICPA ,which CHE

pointed out and fought against it from the beginning.

DOE has a major conflict of interest in being the

manager of deciding who get compensated among those it

harmed."

"These ill workers or their survivors deserve better

than this from the government who put them in harms

way without their knowledge of consent," said Denise

Brock of UNWW. "We have no willing payor at the

Mallinckrodt site in St. Louis, Missouri. The solution

is simple: have DOL serve as the payor, just as

bi-partisan members of Congress proposed in 2000, and

again in 2002 and 2003. DOE describes the willing

payor problem as an 'emergent' issue," noted Brock.

This willing payor problem is not an 'emergent issue,

rather it is a longstanding structural weakness in the

law which needs to be remedied."

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