The new Hanford Workforce Engagement Center could serve as a model across the Department of Energy nuclear cleanup complex, said Anne White, the new DOE assistant secretary for environmental management. Sworn in little more than a month ago, she made her second visit to the Hanford Site in Eastern Washington this week and spoke at a ribbon cutting for the new center in Richland on Thursday.
The center provides guidance to Hanford workers and former personnel navigating a complex system of compensation and medical care reimbursement — offered through federal, state, and contractor programs — to help them find the best path forward.
The collaboration by DOE and labor groups to support workers “is just a great, great thing that I hope to model throughout the complex,” White said. The massive cleanup at Hanford, a Manhattan Project and Cold War plutonium complex, is “not without risk,” she said. Workers need facilities like the new center to make sure they receive the care they need, according to White.
The center’s grand opening was Thursday, but it has already served 609 clients since opening a month ago. They have been about evenly split between former and current workers, according to center staff.
The center had its roots in a discussion Doug Shoop, manager of DOE’s Richland Operations Office at Hanford, initiated with the leadership of the Central Washington Building Trades Council, which coordinates building and construction trade unions at Hanford. The effort was later joined by the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council, an umbrella group for 15 other unions at Hanford.
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) stepped in to insert language in the fiscal 2018 appropriations bill directing DOE to establish a center to help Hanford workers in addressing occupational health issues and navigating the claims process, her staff said.
As Hanford workers tackle challenging and complex cleanup operations, it’s important they can promptly get answers about workers’ compensation, Cantwell said at the center’s grand opening.
“We are not done,” she said. “We want to continue to improve the federal claims process.”
The new center is located at 309 Bradley Blvd., Suite 120, in Richland. It is open from 6 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays. Staff was drawn from the ranks of union and nonunion workers, who then received training on programs available for ill and injured workers. They include a state workers’ compensation program that was revised this year to make Hanford claims more likely to be approved and the federal Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program.
The startup cost of the center was $300,000 and the annual operating cost is $800,000.
