GAP Likens Giving Fluor a Safety Award to Giving Enron One for Ethics

(Seattle, WA) – Today, the Government Accountability Project (GAP) blasted the Department of Energy’s (DOE) announcement that DOE presented a national safety award to the Fluor Hanford company at the Hanford Site in southeastern Washington state earlier this morning.

GAP Nuclear Oversight Director Tom Carpenter summed up GAP’s concerns, stating “Recognizing Fluor Hanford for safety, particularly in light of recent judgments against this company for retaliating against its own Hanford workers for raising safety concerns, is inappropriate and sends an alarming message to contractors: that DOE endorses, or is indifferent toward, the retaliatory behavior of its contractors. This is a mockery of the safety ethics that the Department of Energy claims to stand for.”

Carpenter added, “Giving Fluor a safety award is like giving Enron one for ethics.”

One DOE official was quoted as saying that the award represented “the highest safety honor the Department of Energy can bestow.” The award is part of a DOE-sponsored “Voluntary Protection Program” which was initiated nationwide by DOE in 1994 and is a caricature of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Voluntary Protection Program.

On August 18, 2006, a federal judge from the Department of Labor issued a scathing finding against Fluor, in favor of terminated whistleblower Richard Cecil. Fluor was ordered to reinstate Cecil, pay him lost back-pay and attorney fees, and post a notice of its infraction throughout the Hanford Site. Fluor did not appeal the ruling. Cecil was a millwright at Hanford when he raised nuclear safety concerns associated with the removal of highly-radioactive spent reactor fuel.

That finding came on the heels of a $415,000 settlement in another whistleblower case involving Fluor Hanford in July 2006, regarding electrician Maurice Rosen. Rosen had disclosed the dumping of liquids contaminated with hexavalent chromium into the ground around H-Area of the Hanford Site.

Last September, in a Benton County Superior court claim on behalf of 11 Hanford pipefitter whistleblowers, a jury awarded $4.8 million in damages against Fluor Federal Services for its role in retaliating against workers who raised concerns. Fluor Federal Services is a sister company to Fluor Hanford, both of which are operated under the Fluor corporate umbrella.

In all of these cases, the company attacked the whistleblower rather than addressing the concerns the whistleblower raised. This is the opposite of a safety culture.

Carpenter added, “Fluor Hanford has one of the worst and most expensive track records in retaliating against workers who raise safety issues. Given its abuses of power, the company should be terminated from all government work, not lavishly praised and given awards.”

Carpenter continued, “We are disappointed that the message coming from the Department of Energy’s newly created Office of Health, Safety and Security is to reward those who commit the most egregious violations of safety and health. The Office of Health, Safety and Security was created in place of the former office of Environment, Safety and Health, we were told, to “accelerate change to our safety culture.” For that reason we are puzzled why DOE is celebrating a failed safety culture with awards and recognition.”