Without Honor in Their Own Country

[EASlavin@aol.com]

Dear Steve:

Exactly my point -- they are exactly like veterans.  They are heroes.  My 
father won three Bronze Stars and still receives VA benefits for his service 
as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne in World War II.  The South Jersey 
Chapter of the 82nd Airborne Division Association is named after him (CPL 
Edward  A. Slavin Chapter).  He is honored at parades.  He is invited to 
speak at schools.  People still shake his hand in gratitude (he jumped in 
Normandy when he was 30, and they called him "the old man.).  Young 
paratroopers listen to his stories in awe.

In sharp and marked contrast to veterans, nuclear weapons workers are without 
honor in their own country.  No one honors the nuclear weapons workers.  No  
one gives them benefits.  No one listens to them. No one "feels their pain." 
The President and Vice President have not yet met with them.  Their own 
Congressman, Zach Wamp, refused  to meet with them until Senator Thompson 
acted first.  How rude.

Meanwhile, DOE has offered selected small groups (beryllium workers, 55 Oak 
Ridge workers, Paducah worker) a $100,000 bribe, with no medical benefits, in 
exchange for a unilateral disarmament treaty.  That's not the President's 
doing, its crass Department of Justice and DOE lawyers like Marc Johnston, 
DOE Deputy General Counsel for Litigation.  Meanwhile, DOE contractors like 
Lockheed fight the nuclear weapons tooth and toenail in state courts over 
penurious levels of benefits. They are unpleasant and unfair, in sharp 
contrast to Union Carbide, which settled more workers' compensation  cases.  

Our country owes the nuclear weapons workers and Company Town residents in 
places like Oak Ridge, Paducah, Piketon, Rocky Flats, Hanford, Los Alamos, 
etc. a debt of gratitude.  Instead they have been lied to and kicked in the 
teeth.  

This is not only the practice of DOE and the Federal Government.  I also once 
heard a prestigious environmental group leader state, "They made their pact 
with the devil and so they have to live with the consequences."  Some have 
been truly hateful, as demonstrated by three years of pejorative comments on 
this listserv.  Today, those comments have ceased.  Senator Thompson held a 
hearing on March 22.  Nuclear weapons workers are at last being treated with 
dignity, respect and consideration.  For that we thank you all for your 
support.

When the footnoted, endnoted version of my testimony is posted soon, perhaps 
some of you could offer suggestions about how to draft the "interim 
presumption" for the workers' compensation legislation, so that those who 
have illnesses can be compensated without having to prove causation, as Al  
Brooks now agrees is necessary, in a way that will be reasonable.

With kindest regards,

Ed Slavin

In a message dated 04/06/2000 5:04:21 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
steve.rima@DOEGJPO.COM writes:

<<   In decades past, nuclear weapons workers were looked upon very 
      similarly to soldiers on a battlefield. I'm not defending any of what 
      was done in the past, but let's keep the right perspective on things 
      that were done long ago under very different circumstances.
      
      Steven D. Rima, CHP, CSP
      Manager, Health Physics and Industrial Hygiene
      MACTEC-ERS, LLC
      steve.rima@doegjpo.com
 ******************************************************************** >>
   Ed Slavin wrote, in part:
     
As noted by several of you, DOE has been arrogant lord of all that it sureyed 
for half a century, creating a colossal wasteland, from sea to shining sea, 
from Long Island to Oak Ridge to Rocky Flats to Hanford.  It is the world's 
worst managers in charge of the world's most hazardous materials.   
     
As noted by several professionals on this list, there is a huge amount of 
hubris  on the part of DOE nuclear bomb factory managers.  In Oak Ridge, some 
of the nuclear bomb factory managers and lawyers are the third generation of 
their famliies to tell workers to shut up, keep quiet, there's no problem. 
There must be a gene somewhere, or a bad seed.  :)  
     
DOE does things that no nuclear powerplant in the country does.  It's like 
the joke about substituting lawyers for lab mice at NIH because, among ohter 
reasons, "there are some things that rats just will not do."  :)  Seriously, 
you should not think  of DOE as being a part of the nuclear industry -- it is 
a pariah.  You do not need to defend it any longer.  
     
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, DOE is like a baby, "all appetite on the one 
end, and alll irresponsibility on the other."  As Hazel O'Leary said, DOE 
sites are not unlike what your house would be like if you "had a party every 
day for fifty years and never cleaned up."  Like a baby, DOE also has a 
tendency to go WAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! to try to get its way.  Hence, several years 
worth of anti-worker posts on this listserv.
     
Don't take criticism of DOE as criticism of nuclear powerplants -- they have 
nothing in common but the word "nuclear."  I appreciate that no one in the 
U.S. nuclear power would put 4.2 million pounds of mercury into creeks. 
     
Don't ever again let DOE managers hide behind the nuclear powerplant 
industry, using y'all as human shields or indefensible.  They don't deserve 
defending.  What they did was indefensible. You know it, I know it, 
Congress knows it, Bill Clinton knows it, Bob Dole knows it, and the whole 
world knows it.  DOE is not the nuclear industry.  DOE is the Nuclear 
Weapons industry. 

     It's real easy to make DOE (and AEC, ERDA, et al) the scapegoat, but 
     let's consider a little history here. At the height of the cold war, 
     much of the information that is now coming to light *was* highly 
     classified and not made available to employees. We can argue now 
     whether this was proper or not, but it was done in the name of 
     national security when the real or perceived threat to this country 
     from the USSR was quite different. Let's also remember that the 
     present-day DOE is a cabinet level agency of the federal government, 
     and therefore reports directly to the President.
     
     Just as DOE contractors do what their customer (DOE) tells them to do 
     (hopefully within the law), the DOE does what the President tells them 
     to do (maybe not always within the law). There's much more to this 
     story than just "evil DOE management."
     
     In decades past, nuclear weapons workers were looked upon very 
     similarly to soldiers on a battlefield. I'm not defending any of what 
     was done in the past, but let's keep the right perspective on things 
     that were done long ago under very different circumstances.
     
     Steven D. Rima, CHP, CSP
     Manager, Health Physics and Industrial Hygiene
     MACTEC-ERS, LLC
     steve.rima@doegjpo.com
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