[Marxism] More than a setback for nuclear workers.

[Rod Holt <rholt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The NYT calmly reports June 13 how 3000 workers with claims against the 
U.S. for medical costs and other compensation from being irradiated 
while making atom bombs are dissed by the Department for Health and 
Human Services. The government saves handing $ 1/2 billion or so to 
workers exploited by Rockwell International (which gets off scott free) 
while spending far more than that $1/2 billion or so investigating each 
case, one by one.

The NYT article will raise your blood pressure. But the most 
discouraging thing about the events is the impotance of the union, the 
United Steelworkers. If the union had any clout at all, the little 
agencies would have fallen all over themselves to be magnanimous. As it 
is now, nobody but the workers care. The NYT prints the article just to 
remind workers who might be thnking of making some claims of their own 
just how hopeless such a move would be.

Worse yet, what hope can there be for fair treatment for future workers 
in the nuclear power plant business?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/washington/13rockyflats.html?th&emc=th

June 13, 2007 NYT
Setback for Ill Workers at Nuclear Bomb Plant
By DAN FROSCH

LAKEWOOD, Colo., June 12-- A federal advisory panel recommended Tuesday 
that thousands of former workers at a nuclear weapons plant be denied 
immediate government compensation for illnesses that they say result 
from years of radiation exposure there.

The recommendation is a significant setback for a large number of people 
once employed as plutonium workers at the plant, Rocky Flats, 16 miles 
northwest of Denver. Their union, the United Steelworkers of America, 
had petitioned the Department of Health and Human Services to allow more 
than 3,000 of them to bypass a complex federal evaluation and 
compensation process established by Congress in 2000.

In that time-consuming process, sick workers from Rocky Flats and other 
American nuclear facilities may apply for $150,000 in compensation, plus 
medical benefits, if there is evidence that they suffer from any of 22 
kinds of cancer linked to radiation. A worker must first file a claim 
with the Labor Department, a step that brings a lengthy investigation in 
which scientists from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and 
Health, through records, research and interviews, determine eligibility 
by establishing the radiation dose incurred by the worker. If the 
scientists are unable to determine the dose, the worker may file for 
"special exposure cohort" status.
...
[snip]
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