March 29, 2000
From:
Pamela Gillis Watson
134 Jarrett Lane
Oak Ridge, TN 37830To:U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee
Testimony of Pamela Gillis Watson
Re:Hearings on Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Portsmouth, Ohio, Department of Energy Gaseous Diffusion Plants
I have a number of concerns about the Department of Energy Oak Ridge (DOE‑ORO) Environmental Management Program, the DOE‑ORO Reindustrialization Program, and the Bechtel Jacobs Company's management of the Environmental Management prime contract that I believe are relevant to environmental, safety, and health issues at the DOE‑ORO gaseous diffusion plants and to the ability of various interested parties to obtain accurate and timely information about those issues.
I have been an employee of DOE contractors in Oak Ridge for 10 years. My first 4 years were spent at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and then I transferred to K‑25 in 1993. I was assigned to K‑25 from the summer of 1993 to December 1999. For 2 years I was assigned to an offsite location in Oliver Springs, Tennessee, but for 4 years I worked on site at K‑25. I was one of the Lockheed Martin employees who transferred to the Bechtel Jacobs Company in April 1998 when Bechtel Jacobs became the prime contractor for the DOE‑ORO Environmental Management Program, including the former gaseous diffusion plants at Oak Ridge and Portsmouth.
I remember when the Nashville Tennessean newspaper began their series on the concerns of sick current and former workers and residents who live near the K‑25 Site. Most of the information that filtered down to the K‑25 workers at the time was that we had nothing to worry about in regard to health and safety issues unless we worked in one of the occupations known to be more hazardous (such as those who worked directly with hazardous waste), and that the Tennessean's series was just sensationalism designed to sell newspapers. However, when some of my own colleagues who did not work in one of hazardous occupations became ill (for instance, Kathy Swain and Janet Michel), I began to have doubts. Eventually, I became convinced that it is indeed DOE operations in and near Oak Ridge that are causing at least some of the workers' illnesses. Discoveries and revelations reported during the last year about DOE‑ORO operations, plus my own experiences over the past 2 years as an employee of the Bechtel Jacobs Company, have solidified my belief that the Department of Energy and its contractors‑past and current‑have perpetrated a massive betrayal of the workers, the public, and the environment.
My primary concerns about the current DOE‑ORO Enviromental Management Program, DOE‑ORO Reindustrialization, and the Bechtel Jacobs Company's management of the Environmental Management contract fall into four main categories as detailed below.
1. Lack of experience and knowledge in many employees now doing the Environmental Management work
One concern of mine is that there has been an exodus of experienced and knowledgeable employees from the Environmental Management Program over the last 2 years. A large number of employees who were working for Environmental Management before Bechtel Jacobs took over the contract are simply no longer around. Why? I see a variety of reasons:
1. The Bechtel Jacobs environment is hostile to employees who formerly worked for Lockheed Martin. Former Lockheed Martin employees are openly disrespected, threatened, and driven away by Bechtel Jacobs managers.
b. I believe the Bechtel Corporation and Jacobs Engineering (the parent companies of Bechtel Jacobs) wanted to use the Environmental Management contract to create jobs for their own employees. My first two supervisors with Bechtel Jacobs told me that Bechtel employees were promised jobs, promotions, increased responsibilities, etc., if they would come to Oak Ridge to work, only to be told once they got here that they might not have jobs because Bechtel Jacobs had been "forced" to take more Lockheed Martin employees than they had expected. The only way these employees from the parent companies were going to have jobs was if the grandfathered Lockheed Martin employees and previous subcontractors left. In the meantime, Lockheed Martin employees had been told initially (back when we first learned that the contract would go to a company other than Lockheed Martin) that "only about 12 top managers" in Environmental Management would be replaced when the new company came on board. What actually happened was that Bechtel and Jacobs brought in about 150 employees from their parent companies. Unlike hundreds of grandfathered employees, these employees who came to Bechtel Jacobs from the parent companies have not been "outsourced" to subcontractors. Thus, a disproportionate number of the current "core" Bechtel Jacobs employees are people from Bechtel and Jacobs who had not worked at K‑25 prior to April 1998.
3. Lockheed Martin employees who transitioned to Bechtel Jacobs were not given the "equivalent balance" of pay and benefits they were told they would have when the transition first began to be discussed. Their pay is the same, but their benefits definitely are not. When talented, knowledgeable, experienced employees with marketable skills are mistreated and not given what they were promised, they tend to look for jobs elsewhere.
d. Many employees did not want to be placed with subcontract companies that were seen being undesirable. To avoid being forced to work for these subcontractors, many employees simply found other jobs outside the Environmental Management Program or outside the DOE Complex entirely.
5. Subcontractors who were awarded workforce transition contracts by Bechtel Jacobs wanted to fill the available positions with their own employees instead of the grandfathered employees who were supposed to have right of first refusal on those positions. Bechtel Jacobs has made it easy for them to do just that, while DOE has looked the other way. Subcontractors who have little or no understanding of the work to be done are allowed to decide for themselves how many grandfathered employees they need to hire for any given scope of work and come up with their own position descriptions and qualifications for the positions to be filled. Then, when they claim that no grandfathered employees meet the criteria they have devised for these positions, Bechtel Jacobs allows them to fill the positions with their own employees or with new hires who are cheaper‑but far less knowledgeable and experienced‑than the scorned grandfathered employees from Lockheed Martin.
f. Bechtel Jacobs has laid off grandfathered Lockheed Martin employees while retaining employees from the parent companies, or has "reassigned" grandfathered employees to other positions and given their work to employees from the parent companies. It was apparent to me in the 2 years I worked for Bechtel Jacobs that quite a few of the employees from the parent companies were not qualified to be doing or capable of doing the work that they were given‑work that could have and should have been done by a grandfathered employee. When I complained to DOE Human Resources about work being taken away from the experienced, knowledgeable grandfathered employees and given to "new hires" from the parent companies, I was told that these were "operational decisions" that were the prerogative of Bechtel Jacobs management. When I complained to Bechtel Jacobs management about subcontractors filling positions with their own employees or "new hires" instead of grandfathered employees and claiming the grandfathered employees were not qualified, I was told it was not my responsibility to "trend" hiring practices of the subcontractors, and Bechtel Jacobs was not going to "interfere in the subcontractors' hiring process." When I complained to Bechtel Jacobs management that grandfathered employees were not being identified as eligible for workforce transition for types of jobs they had done in the past and/or could do, I was told that it was the prerogative of Bechtel Jacobs management to decide whom they wanted to do the work.
7. Subcontractors working in the Environmental Management Program prior to the Bechtel Jacobs transition did not have any right of first refusal on their jobs when those jobs were outsourced. What this meant was that when the contract for that work was awarded to a different subcontractor, and the subcontractors previously doing the work were not offered positions with the new subcontractor or weren't made offers they could accept (because of reduced pay and benefits), the experienced subcontractors had to go elsewhere. Many of the positions formerly filled by experienced, knowledgeable subcontractors are now being filled by former Y‑12 employees who had not worked in Environmental Management prior to the transition or by "new hires" brought in by the new subcontractor. This is the case in the Bechtel Jacobs Records Management program, where very few of the new subcontractor's employees have been in their current positions for more than a year or two. This is bound to have an impact on the ability of Congress, the DOE Headquarters investigators, or anyone else to obtain Environmental Management records in an accurate, timely manner.
The net effect of all this is that a lot of the Environmental Management work will now be done by new hires or by employees who lack the necessary knowledge or experience for that type of work. Contrary to what Bechtel Jacobs senior managers seem to believe, this work is not simple "dirt moving." The hazards employees face in Environmental Management and in the DOE Complex as a whole are not the typical kinds of hazards faced in civil engineering or construction work, which is where the majority of Bechtel's experience lies. (For more background, I recommend you read an Office of Technology Assessment report called Hazards Ahead.) I believe it is only a matter of time until there is another serious accident at K‑25 that will be caused in part by the lack of knowledge and experience of workers who are new to that environment.
2. Lack of access to on‑site medical services for employees who have been transitioned to subcontractors
Many‑and maybe all‑Bechtel Jacobs employees who have transitioned to subcontractors no longer have access to on‑site medical services. Further, Bechtel Jacobs management has "gutted" Medical Services at K‑25, which they rationalizaed by saying that many employees have transitioned to subcontractors where they won't be able to access Medical Services, anyway. I was told that Bechtel Jacobs even laid off the K‑25 occupational medicine physician, who was one of the early advocates for the sick workers. (Now isn't that a coincidence!)
3. Risks to workers and members of the public created by Reindustrialization at K‑25
Private companies coming on site as part of the Reindustrialization program are effectively bringing the public inside the gates at K‑25. I am not at all confident that the employees of these private companies are adequately informed of the hazards on site or trained to recognize and handle them. Further, I do not believe the oversight of these private companies is adequate or appropriate. Who is responsible for them? OSHA? DOE? Do they have health and safety plans, and has DOE reviewed them? According to a statement I saw in the tenant guide recently, the reindustrialization tenants at K‑25 are not even required to have a fire protection plan‑but the tenant guide says if they don't have one, the K‑25 Fire Department will merely "show up and throw water on the fire." Isn't it comforting to know that could happen at a Superfund site?
What do the tenant lease agreements say? Why can't we see them? The leasing authority at K‑25, the Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee (CROET), which is a DOE entity, says we cannot see the lease agreements because they contain "proprietary information." Yet the property still belongs to DOE, and CROET is funded with taxpayer dollars.
You see, CROET has a vested interest in not informing lessees of the hazards, because this might scare business away. Until very recently, CROET even carried on their "news" web site a copy of a 1998 opinion column by a pseudo‑science writer who protested against and ridiculed the series the Nashville Tennessean did about the concerns of sick workers and local residents. The column was titled, "Newspaper Invents Nuclear Health Scare." The column was not removed until a number of citizens and sick workers began complaining to CROET and DOE.
Further, there is a widely‑held belief at K‑25 that the private companies and the Bechtel Jacobs subcontractors on site can "do whatever they want" because they are "private companies." I have heard more than one Bechtel Jacobs manager state this as a fact. The corollary of this belief is the notion that private companies and subcontractors don't have to follow the same environmental, safety, and health rules and guidelines as do DOE and the prime contractor.
Now, Reindustrialization has approved such endeavors at K‑25 as a railroad on which the public can take rides through the site and continue on into the "beautiful east Tennessee countryside." A railroad museum has recently been proposed. (Amusing to hear "CROET" and "railroad" used in the same sentence.) Nearby property has recently been rezoned by the city of Oak Ridge for mixed use to allow a housing development to be built there with "riverfront properties" on the DOE‑contaminated waterway. And the public is led to believe that it's all perfectly safe. Well, until recently, beryllium contamination was not thought to be a danger to employees at the gaseous diffusion plants. Until recently, we did not know that employees at the gaseous diffusion plants were exposed to uranium "feed" contaminants such as plutonium, neptunium, and technetium. Until recently, we did not know that nuclear weapons had been dismantled and parts of them buried at the gaseous diffusion plants and that these parts were the source of tritium releases to the environment. What else don't we know yet about what dangers really exist at K‑25? And are we willing to expose not only DOE workers but also members of the public to those potential dangers by bringing them on site through reindustrialization?
Further, are we willing to sell supposedly "safe" metal to the public for recycle that is volumetrically contaminated with radiation at a supposed "savings" for the taxpayers? At the first big, highly publicized sale of equipment opened to the public as part of the reindustrialization program, which was held in Building 1401 at K‑25, a rad‑contaminated piece of machinery was sold to a member of the public. Had the buyer not been suspicious and had his own test run, he might have never known the equipment he bought was "hot." All the equipment that was put up for sale was supposedly checked by DOE and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation prior to the sale and declared "clean." Are we willing to risk more and worse incidents of this kind that could endanger the lives of workers and the public, all in the name of "saving jobs" and "saving money"?
4. Bechtel Jacobs management discouragement of disclosure of concerns and retaliation against those who make disclosures
Workers, the public, and the environment cannot be safe as long as there is a workplace culture at K‑25 in which workers fear speaking out about unsafe conditions and practices and where they are punished for disclosing concerns. I have direct experience with Bechtel Jacobs management in this regard.
In 1998, I called several organizations at K‑25 trying to resolve a concern that there was no effective way to find issuing/signature authorities for welding, burning, and hotwork (WBH) work permits. It is the issuing authority who specifies how the work is to be done, such as whether a fire watch is required. As you have probably heard, there was a fatality at K‑25 several years ago when a welder caught fire while performing WBH work; he had been working alone with no fire watch present. None of the organizations I called in 1998 were maintaining a list of issuing authorities for WBH permits as their own procedure required them to do (though the plant shift superintendent's office told me they would love to have one if I could find it). Eventually, I entered this concern as a formal health and safety concern. In the process of handling my concern, Bechtel Jacobs discovered that there were two conflicting procedures in effect for WBH work, but I was basically told that my concern was not valid because Bechtel Jacobs was still using the old Internal Approval Listing created by Lockheed Martin to identify issuing authorities. However, much later when I gained access to the Internal Approval Listing (in early 1999), I found that it had not been updated since before Bechtel Jacobs took over the contract, and many of the people listed as WBH issuing authorities were not even employed at K‑25 any longer. Still later, after I had reported the concern to DOE, Bechtel Jacobs discontinued use of the Internal Approval Listing to find issuing authorities for work permits and the various organizations started maintaining lists of issuing authorities as the procedure specified. However, the last time I saw these lists (which was a few weeks ago), WBH permit approval authority had expired for nearly all of the people listed on nearly every one I checked.
Over the next several months in 1998 and 1999, I reported a number of health and safety; fraud, waste, and abuse; and information security concerns to Bechtel Jacobs management and submitted a cost savings suggestion. The initial response to my reporting of concerns or submittal of suggestions was usually no response. When I persisted in trying to have concerns addressed or making suggestions, my supervisor told me I had better "lay low," because management was going to try to "get me." After I made my cost savings suggestion into a formal suggestion and sent it to DOE under the Whitestone Initiative, I was told in confidence by a Bechtel Jacobs senior manager whom I had formerly considered to be a friend that he could no longer "do anything to help" because my suggestion had "created quite a stir in Building 1225" (that's where senior management's offices are). I never did get a response to that suggestion, by the way (which was that the Web Services group be moved to the Information Technology organization where they clearly belonged).
Because of Bechtel Jacobs' failure to adequately respond to and address one of the health and safety concerns I reported, there were two recordable injuries at K‑25. One of them was mine, and one of was my coworker's. My coworker eventually had to have surgery and physical therapy related to her occupational injury. I was put on medical restriction that prevented me from doing my job for a week, and then I was moved to a different location where I performed different tasks.
In March 1999, I reported an information security concern to DOE after trying unsuccessfully for 10 days to have the concern addressed by Bechtel Jacobs management. The next day, I was called to a meeting with my manager, where he handed me a letter stating that I was being disciplined because I had "contacted a DOE official." The letter said I could be terminated if there were any further offenses and that in the future I was to confine myself to issues that my management considered to be "within the scope of [my] work assignment." I protested the letter as retaliation, but Bechtel Jacobs senior management backed my manager up all the way. They stated unequivocally that I did not have the right to contact DOE. I then went to DOE and filed an employee concern. Subsequently, the disciplinary letter was retracted by Bechtel Jacobs.
In May 1999, I sent a letter via e‑mail to DOE, members of Congress, and Secretary Richardson protesting the way the Environmental Management contract was being handled by Bechtel Jacobs and stating that DOE and Bechtel Jacobs were not fulfilling their responsibility to protect the workers, the public, and the environment and keep the promises they had made to grandfathered Environmental Management employees. My letter got wide circulation both within and outside Bechtel Jacobs. This was during the hearings regarding Paducah, during which an e‑mail message was produced in which the Bechtel Jacobs site manager at Paducah was quoted as calling the investigation a "circus." Bechtel Jacobs employees in Oak Ridge were warned at staff meetings not to say anything that would embarrass the company with Congress or the media. My coworkers told me they were sure now that Bechtel Jacobs would try to get rid of me.
In October 1999, I filed another health and safety concern (which was only recently found to be valid and resolved). In November, I was handed a layoff notice by Bechtel Jacobs. At the same time, I learned that Bechtel Jacobs planned to continue to keep subcontractors on staff doing work that I had done formerly and for which I was supposed to have right of first refusal. One of these workers being kept on staff doing work that I had done formerly was a man we were told had been laid off by Bechtel and brought out to K‑25 with the new hires from the parent companies. His former office mate told me he admitted he did not even have a degree in the required discipline for our work (technical communication). Our supervisor told us that the reason our work was being given to him was that senior management knew him from the days they worked together at Bechtel, and they were "comfortable" with him. When I questioned why I was being laid off while this employee‑who did not have right of first refusal‑was being kept on staff, I was told that senior management had decided I was not qualified for the work he was doing. Keep in mind that this was work I had performed very successfully for 10 years. Even Bechtel Jacobs senior management described me as having outstanding technical skills and as being a worker who could nearly any task and manage a very heavy workload with ease.
After receiving the layoff notice, I reported to DOE that I believed I was being retaliated against for voicing concerns. DOE's response was to send the issue back to Bechtel Jacobs for resolution. Bechtel Jacobs' response was to send in an HR specialist from Bechtel to "investigate" for DOE. No one, least of all me, was surprised when Bechtel Jacobs' "self investigation" found "no evidence to support [my] allegations." However, the HR specialist told me (in the presence of a witness, by the way) that the reason senior management considered me not to be qualified for the work being done by the former Bechtel employee was that there was a concern I might "pass along sensitive information to DOE." After I pointed out to DOE that my "passing along sensitive information" to DOE had been protected disclosures that could not be used to take adverse employment actions against me, Bechtel Jacobs offered me mediation to resolve the dispute. This mediation has tentatively been scheduled for the second week in April 2000.
Something must be done to educate Bechtel Jacobs to the fact that employees have a right and obligation as federal contractor employees to report concerns to DOE, Congress, law enforcement authorities, and the media and that Bechtel Jacobs can neither discourage this nor retaliate against employees for doing so. Until then, many concerns will go unreported and unresolved because employees cannot afford to lose their means of livelihood.
Signed,
Pamela Gillis Watson