[CPEO-MEF] Energy Department employees' health claims

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Chao vows to hasten injury compensation

DONNA WRIGHT
Bradenton Herald (FL)
January 12, 2005

U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao vowed Tuesday to do everything in
her power to help energy workers and their families who sacrificed for
America's freedom.

Chao promised to work as quickly as possible to settle a backlog of
25,000 Energy Employees Injury Compensation claims the Department of
Labor inherited from the Department of Energy.

Those claims were filed by workers employed by the DOE of the agency's contractors.

Energy employees' claims had been handled differently from the employees
of Loral American Beryllium Co. in Tallevast, which as a private vendor
falls under a different provision of the compensation act.

The Department of Labor has always processed the claims for beryllium
vendor companies.

But the DOE was responsible for processing the claims for its own
employees. DOE failed to process those claims quickly.

As of July 30, the DOE had paid only 14 claims out of nearly 25,000
filed, according to the agency's Web site.

In October, Congress passed the responsibility for processing energy
employees' claims to the Department of Labor in an amendment to the 2005
Defense Authorization Act.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/10622557.htm

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org
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