PRESS RELEASE

ANWAG Finds DOL Interim Final Rules Unfair to Sick Workers

For Release: June 1, 2005

Contact:

Coalition for a Healthy Environment, Knoxville, TN, Harry Williams 865-693- 7249

Grassroots Organization of Sick Workers, Craig, CO, Terrie Barrie 970-824-2260

Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment), Inga Olson 925-443-7148

United Nuclear Weapons Workers, St. Louis, MO, Denise Brock 636-366-4428

May 31, 2005 - Oak Ridge, TN. After reviewing the interim final rules issued by the US Department of Labor (DOL) for The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act (EEOICPA), the Alliance of Nuclear Worker Advocacy Groups (ANWAG) despairs that the majority of the sick nuclear weapons workers will ever receive compensation promised to them. The problems range from how DOL will determine impairment ratings to burdensome document submission requirements for claimants to prove they suffer from a covered illness and are impaired from it.

"Once again federal agencies have thwarted Congressional intent to compensate the sick nuclear weapons workers," says Harry Williams of CHE. "I'm disgusted. We knew the regulations would not be perfect, but what they wrote is riddled with obstacles for the claimants. DOL has decided to walk down the same unjust path that DOE did."

"If we had all of the information DOL requires us to submit for proof of diseases, we wouldn't need this damn law. We could have gone directly to workers' compensation and gotten paid 10 years ago," stated Janet Michel of CHE. "There are no doctors in East Tennessee who will provide the information DOL requires. They are not familiar with the materials used at the sites and they are all afraid to say anything or get involved."

"EEOICPA was intended to take the burden of proof off of the sick workers. That's not how these regulations are written, " says Janine Anderson of CHE. "The rules have given the claimants an impossible task to prove our diseases including illnesses that are secondary or caused by treatment of the primary disease. Not only do claimants have to supply medical documentation but a physician needs to write a narrative explaining step by step how a resulting disease is related to the first covered illness."

"DOL should have just saved the paper and told the workers that they will not be compensated,” stated Terrie Barrie of GOSW. "They've ignored Congress' recommendations on the impairment ratings and changed the probability of causation standard for cancers. And this is only two of the problems with the rules. The only people looking at getting compensated are the people who work for the government agencies involved."

ANWAG will be issuing a white paper on the rules as well as submitting public comments demanding the rules be changed.

* * *