The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has rejected a petition to rehear a case asking that full pension benefits be reinstated for up to 500 people who worked at the Hanford Site in Washington state. It issued the denial Tuesday without comment.
Retirees of Lockheed Martin Services Inc. in February petitioned for a hearing after a three-judge panel of the same appeals court in January upheld the dismissal of their lawsuit against the Department of Energy.
The U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled in September 2017 that plaintiffs had not established that the Energy Department had entered into an implied contract with them to continue full pension benefits when the workers were transferred from Westinghouse Hanford Co. or its subcontractors when the Westinghouse environmental remediation contract expired in 1996.
They were assigned to Lockheed Martin Services as part of a largely failed economic development plan managed by then-new cleanup contractor Fluor Hanford to establish “enterprise companies” that would pick up subcontracts at Hanford to help support them as they solicited work off the site. The goal was to make the new companies permanent parts of the economy in the nearby Tri-Cities and reduce the community’s dependence on Hanford.
Many Westinghouse workers were transferred to Flour and retained the same Hanford benefits, including the Multi-Employer Pension Plan (MEPP) they had with Westinghouse. But about 2,000 workers were assigned to enterprise companies and no longer accrued years-worked toward their traditional Hanford pension calculation.
Most of the enterprise companies failed to acquire significant non-Hanford work, with some folding within two years. Many of their workers were absorbed back into the traditional workforce and were again eligible for full Hanford retirement plans. However, Lockheed Martin Services continued to provide information technology and other services at Hanford for about two decades.
The appeals court decision in January found that although DOE directed Westinghouse to create the MEPP to provide continuity of pension benefits as contracts turned over, the department was not listed as a party to the plan. The federal government funds Lockheed and other employees to manage Hanford, but there is no evidence the government intended to be contractually obligated to Lockheed’s workers through the MEPP, the three-judge panel said.
