Report backs asbestos victims, says trust fund inadequate
Senate Republicans push
for January vote on a bill
that the GAO says isn’t
enough to compensate
victims and families.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (PAI) — A
new federal study has given further am-
munition to groups representing work-
ers who are victims of asbestos-caused
disease and to two key senators, who all
say that a proposed asbestos trust fund
for victims and their families is too
small. The senators fear the taxpayers
might have to bail it out.
The mid-December Government
Accountability Office (GAO) report
paints a dismal financial history of other
such trust funds for workers and warns
lawmakers the same fate could occur
with the asbestos trust fund.
Other funds that exceeded initial cost
estimates include the federal black lung
program, pushed by the Mine Workers
Union, and one for former nuclear plant
workers overexposed to lethal radiation,
advocated by the then-Oil, Chemical
and Atomic Workers Union.
The GAO report comes as Senate
Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.)
plans to bring the asbestos trust fund bill
(S. 852) up sometime this month. The
report is important because S. 852 lim-
its the trust fund for the 200,000-plus
asbestos victims and their families to
$140 billion over a period of years. It
sets extreme standards workers must
meet to claim money for asbestos-
caused disease.
And it lacks ways to add money to
the fund once it runs out. It also bars
victims and their families from going to
court against asbestos manufacturers
and their insurers, throws out past law-
suits and forces victims to start the
process all over again. The firms and in-
surers pushed S. 852 and would pay the
$140 billion, but no more.
The groups, who represent worker
victims of mesothelioma — an as-
bestos-caused cancer — and asbestosis,
and their widows and children, say the
bill is pro-industry, the trust fund is too
small, and that long-suffering victims
would be thrown out of court should the
trust fund run out of money. Victims, in-
cluding construction workers, auto
workers, steel workers, shipyard work-
ers, suffer from diseases sometimes
years after retiring.
The revisions prompted victims’
Service Employees add 26,000
members in Washington State
AUBURN, Wash. (PAI) — With only scattered “no” votes among about 500
delegates, a special convention of an independent union of classified school work-
ers in Washington State voted last month to affiliate with the Service Employees.
The new affiliate, the Public School Employees of Washington, will be SEIU
Local 1948. It represents 26,000 classroom para-educators, campus security, com-
puter technicians and other workers in 175 school districts across Washington,
union President George Dockins said.
Local 1948’s first priority will be to lobby for more money for K-12 education
from the State Legislature in Olympia, SEIU said. Currently, the ratio between stu-
dents and classified employees — who provide key school services, such as secre-
taries, bus drivers, food service, maintenance, and thousands more classifications
— is an outdated 60:1, the union said.
groups and families to oppose S. 852.
Early last year, the AFL-CIO walked
away from the negotiations in disgust at
business’ power to write it. In Decem-
ber the two key senators, leaders of the
Budget Committee, objected.
Frist “made a commitment to bring
up the asbestos trust fund bill on the
heels of receiving a letter from six as-
bestos victims’groups voicing our con-
cerns with the funding and asking the
Senate take more time to review perti-
nent issues,” said Susan Vento, chair of
the Committee to Protect Mesothelioma
Victims. But “Frist made clear that re-
gardless of whether or not serious prob-
lems with the bill are resolved, he will
force it to the floor for a vote in January.
“We can understand why stakehold-
ers are trying to hustle this legislation
through — every week new problems
arise. Budget issues, among many oth-
ers, must be resolved before Congress
even considers this piece of legislation,”
Vento added.
And GAO warns that, off past his-
tory, the money in the trust fund may
not be enough to compensate the vic-
tims and their families.
“Because these programs may ex-
pand significantly beyond the initial
costs anticipated when they were en-
acted, policymakers must carefully con-
sider the cost and precedent-setting im-
plications of establishing any new fed-
eral compensation program, particularly
in light of the current federal deficit,”
GAO’s report summary says.
GAO found that in the black lung
program and two for workers handling
the nuclear materials, ”the actual num-
ber of claims filed significantly ex-
ceeded the estimates of the number of
anticipated claims.” It said the oldest
program, for black lung, was supposed
to cost $3 billion in its first, limited,
time frame, from 1969-76. It has cost
$41 billion for coal miners permanently
disabled by the crippling lung disease.
“The programs have experienced
unanticipated shortfalls. For instance,
the Black Lung Fund borrowed over
$8.7 billion from the Treasury to date
and the interest payments exceeded $7
billion. All four programs have, at vari-
ous times, taken years to process some
claims, resulting in some claimants
waiting a long time to obtain compen-
sation,” GAO added.
Senate Budget Committee Chair-
man Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) and the
panel’s top Democrat, Kent Conrad (D-
N.D.), raised many of the same objec-
tions in a letter to Frist. They said the
cost of asbestos claims could be up to
four times the money — the $140 bil-
lion — that the insurers and asbestos
manufacturers pledged to the fund.
That lack of cash would force the
taxpayers to bail out the manufacturers
and insurers, in order to pay the victims
and their survivors, Frist and Conrad
said.
Gregg and Conrad want a delay be-
cause a study by the economic consult-
ing firm Bales White said the total cost
of paying asbestos victims and their sur-
vivors could range from $301 billion to
$560 billion over a period of a decade
or more. S. 852 has no provisions for
refilling the trust fund should it run out
of cash.
“There remain major unresolved
questions about the budgetary impact of
the bill,” the senators warned. They in-
clude “the actual cost of the program,”
whether the trust fund will have enough
money to pay asbestos claims, and “a
lack of clarity” on how much compa-
nies will pay into the trust fund and how
much the insurers will pay. Gregg and
Conrad also questioned whether even
those payments “will generate adequate
revenues to satisfy the program's costs.
“We believe these issues should be
clarified. Because of the major adverse
impact the legislation could have on the
federal budget deficit if there are fund-
ing shortfalls, we ask that at least until
these issues are fully resolved, that the
Senate not take any further action on the
legislation,” the senators concluded.
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