Including Hanford Reservation
Free medical screenings for workers at nuclear sites
ranted a recommendation for referral,” Grosseen told the North-
west Labor Press.
For the three key indicators of occupational disease associated
with work at Hanford, BCTMed has have found that nearly 38 per-
cent of participants with X-rays have lung abnormalities; more
than 38 percent of those with breathing tests have decreased lung
capacity; 66 percent of those with a hearing test have evidence of
work-related noise-induced hearing loss, and 2.7 percent of those
with a beryllium test have evidence of sensitization.
Ayers encourages all people who worked with nuclear energy to
have a medical screening. “It’s a positive, very easy experience,” he
said.
The free screening consists of two steps: a work history inter-
view and a medical exam.
In step one, workers provide a work history interview over the
phone to determine what exposure to hazardous material they may
have had. In step two, if it is determined that there were exposure
risks, the worker would make arrangments to receive a free med-
ical screening examination at a medical provider near their home to
test for illnesses that may have developed.
Following the exam, the participant receives a letter indicating
any medical findings. If an illness is discovered, BTMed can steer
the worker to government-funded benefit programs to treat the ill-
ness. Many workers who have undergone the screening program
have been eligible to file a claim with the U.S. Department of La-
bor under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensa-
tion Program Act (EEOICPA).
EEOICPA offers workers medical coverage for the illness from
the date the claim was filed, and a compensation
lump-sum payment. In addition, the program will
assist participants who want to file claims for work-
ers’ compensation for any work-related problem.
Workers who have been screened are invited back
Bennett Hartman
for a re-screening three years later. Grosseen encour-
ages workers to re-test. “We are finding significant
Morris & Kaplan, llp
newly-diagnosed disease in participants who receive
Attorneys at Law
a re-screening,” she said.
TRI-CITIES, Wash. — Union construction workers who spent
any time at all working at Hanford Reservation, or at any of the
hundreds of nuclear weapons program sites in the U.S., are eligible
to receive a free medical screening to see if they have been exposed
to life-threatending ailments.
The free service is provided through the Building Trades Na-
tional Medical Screening Program (BTMed), which started in
1996 in cooperation with the Department of Energy. BTMed
serves union construction workers from 23 DOE sites, including
Hanford, Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Labora-
tory in Scoville, and Amchitka Test Site in Amchitka Island,
Alaska.
Mark Ayers, president of the Building and Construction Trades
Department, AFL-CIO, said BTMed expects to screen 2,400 work-
ers this year. Overall, 16,000 workers (out of some 700,000) have
been screened — with more than 3,000 of those having worked at
Hanford.
“During the boom years of the 1970s and ‘80s, contractors and
subcontractors at Hanford were calling for workers from all over
the country,” said Sherry Gosseen, who adminsters the program at
Hanford there through Zenith Administrators. “This program deals
with current and former construction workers that have worked at
Hanford and other sites.”
Gosseen said the BTMed program at Hanford has recom-
mended referral for treatment of a medical condition to 2,680 of
those who completed the first screening, and to 425 of those who
completed re-screening.
“In all, we have found 5,716 medical conditions which war-
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PAGE 2
You may be eligible to participate in the BCTMed program if
— You performed construction work (for either the prime con-
tractor or subcontractors) at any time in the past at any of the fol-
lowing DOE sites:
• Hanford Reservation, Richland, Washington
• Idaho National Engineering and Environmental
Laboratory (INEEL), Scoville, Idaho
• Amchitka Test Site, Amchitka Island, Alaska
• Rocky Flats Plant, Golden, Colorado
• Battelle Laboratories-King Avenue, Columbus, Ohio
• Battelle Laboratories-West Jefferson, Columbus, Ohio
• Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York
• Brush-Luckey, Luckey, Ohio
• Fernald Closure Project, Fernald, Ohio
• Kansas City Plant, Kansas City, Missouri
• Mallindkrodt Chemical Co, St. Louis, Missouri
• Mound Plant, Miamisburg, Ohio
• Oak Ridge, Knoxville, Tennessee
• Pinellas, Largo, Florida
• Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Paducah, Kentucky
• Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Piketon, Ohio
• Savannah River Site, Aiken, South Carolina
• Weldon Spring Plant, Weldon Spring, Missouri
— And you think you may have been exposed to any health
hazards, including radiation, beryllium, asbestos, silica, mercury,
cadmium, nickel, lead or other heavy metals, solvents or de-
greasers, or any other fumes, vapors or dusts, or noise.
— Or you or your doctor think you have had serious health
problems as a result of your Department of Engergy work, includ-
ing anyone who has or has had cancer, serious lung disease or any
other serious illness that you think could be caused by toxic expo-
sures.
If you worked at Hanford, call Sherry Gosseen at the Hanford
Outreach Office at 1-509-542-9347. If you worked elsewhere, call
BCTMed at 1-800-866-9663 or go online for more information at
www.btmed.org.
Unitus Credit Union busts CWA
Communications Workers of Amer-
ica (CWA) Local 7901 — the union
that represents workers at Qwest and
AT&T — is asking unions and their
members not to do business with Uni-
tus Community Credit Union.
For more than 30 years, the credit
union’s employees were members of
CWA. Unitus — formerly known as
Oregon Telco Community Credit
Union — started as the credit union
for telephone company employees.
But in 2002 it changed its charter to
open up membership to any resident of
six Portland-metro-area counties. And
in 2004 the credit union changed its
name to Unitus. It grew to 65,000
members and $700 million in deposits.
Unitus’ final union contract expired
Nov. 1, 2006. In over a year of negoti-
ations, management refused to budge
from its demands for a pay scale based
on “market” wages and “merit”
bonuses.
In the end, said Local 7901 Presi-
dent Madelyn Elder, Unitus managers
campaigned intensively for Unitus
workers to vote out the union. Man-
agers held anti-union meetings, dis-
tributed anti-union literature, and
mailed employees a certified letter
telling them how to quit the union.
Union staff were only able to talk with
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
workers after-hours, and by visiting
workers at home. Unitus management
told workers they could call the police
if union representatives came to their
homes, Elder said.
“Management put out the word
that, ‘All this conflict will go away if
you get rid of the union,’ ” Elder said.
“We kept telling them, ‘Yeah, but so
will your contract. You’ll be at-will
employees.’ ”
CWA filed several unfair labor
practice charges against Unitus, but
none were found to have merit by the
National Labor Relations Board.
On Dec. 17, in an NLRB-con-
ducted decertification election, the
vote was 31 to 31. Because federal law
requires that a union demonstrate ma-
jority support, a tie in a union election
means a loss for the union.
“It was a real heartbreaker,” Elder
said.
Now that Unitus is nonunion, CWA
Local 7901 plans to withdraw deposits
of about $200,000 from the bank, and
take its business to a credit union
where workers are union-represented.
United Advantage Northwest Fed-
eral Credit Union has agreed to open
up membership to CWA. UANW is
the credit union for members of
Plumbers and Fitters Local 290 and
several printers unions, plus employ-
ees of about 60 companies. Workers
there are represented by Office and
Professional Employees Local 11,
which also represents workers at
IBEW and United Workers Federal
Credit Union; UFCW Northwest Fed-
eral Credit Union; and Pacific NW
Ironworkers Federal Credit Union.
Elder thinks several hundred CWA
members also have accounts at Uni-
tus.
Though withdrawing funds, CWA
will keep its Unitus account open so
that it can attend the credit union’s
March 16 annual meeting.
The Oregon AFL-CIO has deposits
of about $425,000, which it placed at
Unitus specifically because workers
there were union-represented. Oregon
AFL-CIO President Tom Chamber-
lain said the federation would with-
draw the deposits whenever CWA re-
quests it.
CWA’s boycott also has the back-
ing of the Northwest Oregon Labor
Council, AFL-CIO, which voted to
place Unitus on its “Unfair/Do Not
Patronize List.”
Under federal labor law, CWA can
request another election in a year’s
time if at least a third of the workers
still want to be union.
FEBRUARY 1, 2008