Whistleblowers recount retaliation by Department of Energy

Hanford has not bothered to implement a pilot project intended to provide more protection for whistleblowers going up against contractor lawyers paid for by the Department of Energy, Sen. Clair McCaskill of Missouri said Thursday.

It was one of many ways DOE has failed to hold its nuclear contractors accountable, according to a highly critical Government Accountability Office report.

The report found only two violation notices have been issued against contractors in the past 20 years.

“All the words that the (Department of Energy) proclaims about wanting to have a strong safety culture, a safety-conscious work environment and that it has zero tolerance for retaliation are a pretense,” whistleblower Sandra Black said at a news conference on Capitol Hill, her voice shaking with emotion.

“It is impossible to explain how devastated I am,” she said. “I did nothing wrong.”

Both Black and Hanford whistleblower Walt Tamosaitis joined three Democratic senators at a news conference addressing the report. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts requested the investigation more than two years ago.

The senators initially asked the GAO to get to the bottom of persistent incidents of retaliation against whistleblowers reported at the Hanford nuclear reservation.

The scope of the GAO’s review soon broadened to the handling of 87 contractor employee complaint filed at 10 of the DOE’s largest nuclear facilities, including Savannah River Site near Aiken, South Carolina.

“The three of us have been doing this awhile, and I think it would be fair to say we thought that we had seen it all,” Wyden said.

“Today, however, it seems that there’s a whole new precedent. We’re talking about a contractor who was retaliated against for actually helping government auditors investigate retaliation against whistleblowers.”

When Black’s colleagues came to her to report unsafe, illegal or wasteful practices at the Savannah River nuclear facility in South Carolina, she assured them that the Department of Energy would not tolerate retaliation against them.

“Now I know that wasn’t true,” said Black, of Martinez, Ga.

The Savannah River contractor is headed by Carol Johnson, who previously was president of Washington Closure Hanford. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions has previously declined to comment on the Black case, but has said it encourages employees to speak up.

Black, as the head of the Savannah River site’s employee complaints program, was required by her job to evaluate concerns and protect employees who raised them.

Then she herself was fired, allegedly because she’d cooperated with government auditors who were investigating retaliation against whistleblowers.

Tamosaitis said the day in 2010 he was removed as the research and technology manager for Hanford’s vitrification plant started months of near “solitary confinement” in a basement office as Hanford officials waited for him to quit.

“I was ostracized, did not know whom I reported to, was not given any significant work and not invited to any group meetings for over four years,” he said.

His employer, AECOM, settled with him for $4.1 million after a nearly five-year legal battle, continuing to disagree that it had retaliated against Tamosaitis.

Those years were “exhausting and beyond stressful,” he said. But his concerns about preventing a hydrogen explosion within the vitrification plant were validated and are being addressed, he said.

Construction has been stopped at key parts of the plant since 2012 to address potential safety problems he raised before he was removed from the project, as well as other technical issues.

He estimates the plant will cost $30 billion, up from the last official estimate made a decade ago of $12.3 billion.

McCaskill said the GAO report confirmed her fears that DOE was not taking whistleblower retaliation seriously enough.

“I know we have heard the secretary of energy and his predecessors saying that things will get better, but based on the findings of this report released today, it’s clear that things are not getting better,” she said.

The report verified that contract employees at the DOE’s nuclear sites “are working in an environment that is not open, not safety conscious and hostile to whistleblowers,” she said.

One particular point of concern, McCaskill said, is the report’s finding that the DOE hasn’t been making full use of a pilot program she’d helped put in place to enhance whistleblower protection for contract employees.

The report says the DOE has not taken steps to evaluate the pilot program’s merits and could not even tell investigators which contractors had adopted it and when.

Two of the DOE’s largest nuclear facilities, Savannah River Site and Hanford, “had not bothered to implement the program” at all, McCaskill said.

“I don’t know what kind of power these contractors have, but it’s amazing to me that we aren’t willing to step up and give these employees who are working in nuclear facilities the same kind of protections as federal employees,” McCaskill said.

The pilot is scheduled to expire in January, although the senator said legislation to make it permanent would be introduced in the House of Representatives soon. Under the pilot program DOE’s Office of Inspector General investigates alleged retaliation and whistleblowers do not need to pay for an attorney.

DOE’s policy already requires contractors to maintain safe environments for employees to report concerns about health, safety, fraud and abuse. If there is sufficient evidence that a contractor has created a chilled work environment, the DOE can hold it accountable.

But as the report notes, “it is unclear what would constitute sufficient evidence” because DOE’s policies are too vague.

DOE said in a statement Thursday that the agency was working to emphasize the importance of a safety culture with the department’s leadership. It’s also looking into the possibility of assessing civil penalties against contractors for retaliating against employees who raise nuclear safety concerns.

DOE agreed with the report’s recommendations to strengthen its employee concerns program and revise its policies.

The agency will continue efforts “to foster a work environment that encourages open communication, a questioning attitude and an organizational culture that promotes the free expression of safety concerns by our workforce,” the statement said.

This story was originally published July 14, 2016 at 6:43 PM with the headline "Whistleblowers recount retaliation by Department of Energy."