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Update: September 4, 2008

The Washington State Supreme Court has ruled in favor of granting the 2005 damages decision to the Hanford pipefitters. This monumental victory effectively ends an 11 year legal struggle for justice by these brave workers.

Click here for the Tri-City Herald article

The Decision in 2005

The long-awaited trial in the case of 11 Hanford pipefitter whistleblowers that started on July 18, 2005, ended in victory on September 2, 2005. All 11 whistleblowers were victorious in their claims against Fluor Federal Services, a Hanford subcontractor. A string of safety issues, culminating in a dispute over an unsafe valve, spiraled into a long and bitter legal battle waged against these pipefitters by Department of Energy (DOE) contractors at the Hanford nuclear facility in Washington state.

 

 

 

The story begins in 1997. For months, seven Hanford pipefitters, led by foreman Randi Walli, raised concerns about the continuing failure of tank farm pipes to meet basic safety requirements. These tank farms hold approximately 53 million gallons of high-level nuclear and toxic waste underground, and have been documented on numerous occasions as leaking into the surrounding environment.

 

In May 1997, Walli's crew was told to install and test a valve into a system carrying high-level nuclear waste. However, this valve was known to be unsafe, because it was under-rated for the stated pressures. If the pipes failed, it would risk serious injury or death for those in the vicinity, potentially spread contamination, and jeopardize the structural integrity of the storage tanks. The crew refused to install the valve, and all seven were laid off the next day.

 

With GAP's help, these seven pipefitters charged Fluor Hanford and Fluor Federal Services, the DOE contractors, with whistleblower retaliation in August 1997. Two months later, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) ruled in their favor – and Fluor Hanford and Fluor Federal Services appealed. The day before the scheduled appeals hearing, however, the companies retreated from this position, agreeing to reinstate the pipefitters and settle lost wages.

 

However, the company laid off seven other pipefitters to allegedly make room for the returning workers. One Fluor Federal Services executive spread a lie that the original seven had agreed to this as part of their reinstatement. Other workers, believing the rumor, were upset at the returning crew for agreeing to dump their union brothers. This created hostility, which quickly spiraled into retaliation. In deposition testimony, a Fluor manager testified that these workers let go to make room, did not need to be dismissed, and that he was threatened by another manager to not to reveal this information.

 

In October 1998, five of the original pipefitters were laid off again. Several other witnesses were subsequently laid off or terminated after testifying in support of the pipefitters, or even for being too closely associated with them. In May 2001, these five, along with six others, were back in court leveling new charges of whistleblower retaliation.

 

This round of lawsuits changed venue, switching from administrative to State Superior court in Richland. This court delayed the original trial date in 2001 on its own motion. The trial was again delayed in 2002. This same judge made a series of damaging rulings that were appealed – each of which was consequently overturned. One ruling that involved whether the pipefitters were obliged to only use union grievance procedures went to the Washington Supreme Court, followed by the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court denied review, effectively endorsing the Washington State Supreme Court’s conclusion. Foreman Randi Walli also testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the case in 2002.

 

FOIA requests reveal that the government has reimbursed contractors Fluor Hanford and Fluor Federal Services at least $3 million in legal costs associated with the case, with the actual amount increasing substantially in all likelihood.

 

At the same time, Fluor Hanford actively blocked the Hanford Joint Council (HJC), a mediation body at Hanford with a 100 percent success record in resolving whistleblower disputes, from taking the pipefitter cases for mediation. The pipefitters had approached HJC, seeking its services.

 

Before the trial began, Fluor Hanford was dropped as a defendant in the lawsuit, leaving Fluor Federal Services as the sole defendant.

 

Since Fluor Federal Services lost, it risks being ordered to reimburse all of its legal costs and remedies to the government under existing rules. It also risks a civil penalty by the DOE’s Price Anderson Act enforcement office, which recently assessed a $54,000 fine against an Ohio contractor for whistleblower reprisal. A similar fine in the pipefitter case could approach $600,000.

 

“This case is all about Fluor’s multi-million dollar grudge match against a crew of pipefitters who did their jobs safely and well, which is apparently not the expected behavior at Hanford," said Tom Carpenter, Director of GAP’s Nuclear Oversight Program. "Instead of gratitude for doing the company a favor by identifying an unsafe condition, these workers were fired and blacklisted, and their careers wrecked. Fluor is sending a message to all workers at Hanford to keep silent or face financial ruin. The government is backing Fluor the whole way with generous handouts to pay the millions in legal fees that Fluor is racking up in its war on the whistleblowers."