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.]