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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (April 17, 2015)
SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900 NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS VOLUME 116, NUMBER 8 INSIDE Workers’ Memorial See Pages 8-9 Union meetings 4 Free classifieds 14 PORTLAND, OREGON APRIL 17, 2015 The Demolition of Workers’ Compensation Workers Memorial Day, April 28 OregOn wOrkers whO died On the jOb last year will be remem- bered at ceremOnies in salem and pOrtland. The Oregon AFL-CIO and Northwest Oregon Labor Council will hold memorial services the last week of April to honor the 52 workers who were killed on the job in Oregon in 2014. Both services are part of the national AFL-CIO’s Workers Memorial Day, which recognizes the thousands of U.S. workers who die each year and the more than 1 million who are injured at work. The Oregon AFL-CIO’s observance will be at noon, Tuesday, April 28, at the Fallen Workers Memorial outside the Labor and Industries Build- ing, 350 Winter St. NE, on the Capitol Mall in Salem. The service will feature the reading of the names of the Oregon workers who died on the job in 2014. On Monday, April 27, the Northwest Oregon Labor Council will hold a memorial service at its monthly delegates meeting. The meeting starts at 7 p.m. at the IBEW Local 48 Hall, 15937 NE Airport Way, Portland. Once upon a time, American workers could expect workers’ compensation insurance to pay their medical bills and lost wages if they were hurt on the job. But that’s less and less the case, according to a report by NPR and ProPublica, a non- profit that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. After a year-long investigation, the two news organizations found that all around the country, state legislatures are whittling away at workers’ comp systems, with terrible consequences for hundreds of thousands of work- ers who suffer serious injuries on the job each year. According to the report: • At least 33 states have re- duced benefits or made it harder to qualify for benefits. • Some states now cut off benefits after an arbitrary time limit, even if workers haven’t recovered. • Employers and insurers in- other bodily organs. Wah Chang was added to the list of facilities in 2011. By then, Steffy was active in a newly formed chapter of the USW retiree group, the Steel- workers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR). He worked with the Hanford Resource Cen- ter to get educated about the benefit program. Steffy got the USW to pay for a mailing to re- tirees, and put up cards in the credit union. He began reading obituaries, looking for any men- tion of the deceased having worked at Wah Chang, in order to make sure widows and chil- dren were aware of the benefit. Steffy said many retirees still don’t know about the program. “People will retire to Mon- tana, and spend their life savings The changes have been pushed by big businesses and insurance companies on the false premise that costs are out of control. In fact, employers are paying the lowest rates for workers’ comp insurance since the 1970s—even as the costs of health care have increased dra- matically. Nationally, workers comp premiums were $3.42 for every $100 of workers’ wages in 1988. They were $1.85 in 2014. And, the investigation found, taxpayers are picking up costs that should be borne by workers comp. One University of Cali- fornia study estimated that workers’ comp covered less than a third of injured workers’ medical costs and lost earnings in 2007, and that government programs like Social Security Disability, Medicare and Medi- caid had paid out about $30 bil- lion to fill part of the gap. The rest of the gap came from regu- lar health and disability insur- ance, or out of workers’ pockets, the study showed. And it’s not clear workers’ comp systems were generous enough before state lawmakers started cutting. In the early 1970s, Congress established a commission to study state laws. The National Commission on State Workmen’s Compensation Laws issued its report in 1972, finding that “protection fur- nished by workmen’s compen- sation to American workers Turn to Page 6 Turn to Page <#> On the hunt for cancer at Wah Chang Thousands of workers may have been exposed to radiation By Don McIntosh Associate Editor ALBANY, Ore. — Every day, Garry Steffy scans obituaries looking for his former co-work- ers. Steffy, 64, retired in 2010 af- ter 39 years at an Albany metals plant owned by ATI Specialty Alloys and Components. His job was to operate an electron beam furnace, melting metals like zirconium and niobium in a vacuum chamber. The plant was known as Tele- dyne Wah Chang when Steffy began in 1971. That was the year Wah Chang got a Union Carbide subcontract to melt ura- nium-enriched metals for the U.S. government’s nuclear weapons program. The work lasted until 1972, but the resid- ual radiation stuck around at the plant for the next 40 years. Workers at the plant then and now are members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 6163. Steffy was one of the union members on the plant safety committee. Yet it wasn’t until after his retirement that he learned that he and his co-work- ers had been exposed to radioac- tive materials in 1971 and 1972. That revelation came in a June 2011 article in the Albany De- mocrat-Herald about a federal government program paying compensation to radiation-ex- posed workers who later devel- oped cancer. Cancer was prevalent among Steffy’s co-workers, so he de- cided to make it his mission to spread the word about the pro- gram. “Somebody fought for my rights,” Steffy told the Labor Press. “Now it’s my turn.” The Energy Employees Oc- cupational Illness Compensa- tion Program was created by Congress in 2000 to help those made sick by radiation, beryl- lium, or silica as a result of their work on federal nuclear energy and weapons programs. It pays medical bills plus $150,000 to workers who are diagnosed with one of 22 cancers caused by ra- diation—or to their surviving family members. Exposure to radioactive material can cause non-Hodgkins lymphoma, mul- tiple myeloma, leukemia, and cancers of the stomach, thyroid, pancreas, colon, liver and 10 creasingly control medical deci- sions, such as whether an in- jured worker needs surgery. • Workers in 37 states can’t pick their own doctor, or must choose from a list provided by their employers. • Compensation for lost body parts varies greatly from one state to another. For example, maximum compensation for losing an eye is $27,280 in Ala- bama, but $261,525 in Pennsyl- vania. [It’s $156,920 in Oregon, and $47,306 in Washington.]
