Alissa Tabirian
NS&D Monitor
7/31/2015
Former Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) employee Anthony Rivera filed a complaint to Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz earlier this month alleging that he had been fired after reporting hazards at the lab to management. Rivera told NS&D Monitor he was employed at the lab since 1984 and fired on October 17, 2013, upon raising issues about the misuse of finances in certain accounts and the hazards at the High Explosives Application Facility (HEAF) where he worked for 16 years. The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA) dismissed a complaint Rivera filed last year on the matter, and in March 2015 DOE denied his appeal of the complaint dismissal. He appealed to Moniz this month under federal whistleblower protection provisions, requesting either full reinstatement in his previous position or a renewed OHA investigation of the firing.
“When issues are raised to [lab] management, it does not come across as being the honorable thing to do,” Rivera said to NS&D Monitor. “It comes across as stepping on someone’s toes.” Rivera said Livermore employees who raise questions are considered “combative” and those who make suggestions regarding lab facilities are considered “disruptive.” According to Rivera, “this is the language that they use to get rid of employees.”
In legal brief filed with the OHA and provided to NS&D Monitor, Rivera said he had disclosed concerns about “port glass failure” in the HEAF, a test facility for non-nuclear explosive devices, “noting that the port glass failure was the fourth incident at HEAF in six months.” According to the document, “Testing explosives in a facility having defective equipment certainly constitutes improver use and is dangerous.” In another instance, Rivera ordered a work pause because he “believed a substantial and specific danger to employees’ health or safety existed because an individual who had no known technical qualifications was functioning as . . . ‘safety manager’ for the ‘120 VAC interlock’ assignment,” the brief says.
According to the OHA’s March 9, 2015, decision on Rivera’s appeal, Rivera alleged employment termination “after he reported fraud, gross mismanagement, gross waste of funds, and abuse of authority” but was in fact fired due to a “pattern of insubordination and disobedience towards his supervisors’ instructions, repeatedly failing to perform his duties as instructed, failing to meet with his supervisors, and disrupting others’ work.” The document notes that Rivera “had a significant number of disputes” with his management over the years, including a racial discrimination complaint he filed in 2011 and subsequent conflicts that “centered on Rivera’s annual performance reviews, his alleged sending of E-mails to inappropriate personnel, his removal from his Laser Diagnostics position supporting LSEO’s National Ignition Facility (NIF), his alleged conduct towards his supervisors, and the receipt of various progressive employee disciplines by LLNS, including a Letter of Warning (LW), and a five-day suspension.”
According to the OHA document, Rivera’s January 2014 complaint alleged retaliation for his “various disclosures” on mismanagement and fraud, but in September 2014 “the OHA Investigator dismissed Rivera’s Part 708 Complaint.” In Rivera’s subsequent appeal, he said the investigator “failed to comprehensively review the allegations he made in his disclosures and did not collect sufficient witness testimony to support his allegations.” The OHA denied the appeal, concluding the disclosures “failed, as a matter of law, to adequately reference fraud, gross mismanagement, gross waste of funds, or abuse of authority.”
Initially disqualified for benefits on the grounds that he had been fired for misconduct, Rivera also filed an appeal with the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board in 2013. In the Sacrament Office of Appeals’ January 2014 decision the judge found that Rivera “is qualified for benefits” because his employer did not adequately prove his misconduct and “discharged the claimant for reasons other than misconduct.” The appeals court also noted that Rivera “had received positive reviews in prior years regarding working well with others” but that in his 2012 review he “was considered combative and argumentative, ignoring priorities and not supporting the customer.” This, Rivera alleged according to the document, “was the result of retaliation.”
Lynda Seaver, spokeswoman for LLNL’s managing body, Lawrence Livermore National Security LLC, told NS&D Monitor that Rivera was terminated “due to myriad performance issues,” and that “his complaints of fraud, gross mismanagement, abuse of authority, retaliation, and on and on, are baseless.” Seaver said the case “has been adjudicated by several outside agencies,” resulting in dismissal of Rivera’s appeal attempts. She added that “an administrative law judge determined Rivera was entitled to unemployment benefits,” but that “there was no ruling that the reasons given [for his termination] were false.”
Rivera’s attorney, Anthony Bothwell, told NS&D Monitor that no further activity has taken place since Rivera’s complaint to Moniz this month. He said the energy secretary could either “remand the case to OHA to conduct an investigation and/or . . . a hearing, or [Moniz] could order remedies requested by Mr. Rivera directly.” Moniz “conceivably could deny the petition for review,” which “would be an invitation for us to bring the matter to court,” Bothwell said.
