Whistleblower Carson Sues DOE

by Mark Newbold Neal
Oak Ridger staff

Joseph Carson Thursday filed a lawsuit against his employer, the U.S. Department of Energy, to stop his reassignment to Maryland.

Carson works as an environment, safety and health resident for DOE headquarters in Washington and is one of several residents assigned to look over the safety of operations in Oak Ridge. Carson is responsible for reporting safety deficiencies in the nuclear safety programs in Oak Ridge.

On Dec. 18, Carson was informed by his boss, Ray Hardwick, director of the office of ES&H residents, that he would have to move to DOE's Office of Oversight in Germantown, Md., before March 2 or lose his job.

Carson claims this order to move is the culmination of a long series of retaliations that DOE has taken against him. Carson is a longtime whistleblower who has raised safety concerns in Oak Ridge since 1993. He has filed and won three complaints accusing DOE of reprisal, or actions taken by an employer to retaliate against a worker for voicing concerns.

Those complaints were handled by the federal Merit System Protection Broad, which hears nearly all whistleblower concerns from federal employees, Carson said. These victories were small, Carson said, and he claims that his employers, DOE's safety professionals, continue to take actions to suppress his concerns. So Carson is taking a new route to resolve his problem.

"The avenues that I have been pursuing are not getting any resolution to my situation," Carson said. "That's why I am elevating it to a federal court."

Carson is filing suit under the First Amendment. He told The Oak Ridger that he understands that federal employees have limited rights to free speech on the job.

"We are arguing that DOE is violating my limited rights of free speech," Carson said, adding that the U.S. Circuit Court in Washington, D.C., may decide that it does not have jurisdiction over such a case. If so, Carson said, he will continue to protest his relocation through the Merit System Protection Board system. However, Carson noted, certain rules may delay any hearing until mid-April, so Carson would have to move to Maryland in that case.

Bob Seldon, an attorney with the Project on Liberty and the Workplace, is filing the suit on behalf of several groups that are concerned with safety and openness in the DOE workplace -- the nonprofit legal group Government Accountability Project, and two local groups, the Oak Ridge Health Liaison and Knoxville's American Environmental Health Studies Project.

The Oak Ridger contacted the DOE press office in Washington Friday, but no one responded to an inquiry about the lawsuit.

Carson said he first identified what he calls a "chilled atmosphere for safety" in Oak Ridge in 1993. Carson claims that workers in Oak Ridge are afraid to report their safety concerns for one or both of these reasons: (1) fear that DOE and Lockheed Martin, the company that manages the Oak Ridge facilities for DOE, might retaliate against them, or (2) belief that their concerns will do no good.

"Fear of reprisal is what this case is all about," Carson said. "It is part of the reason for the safety deficiencies in Oak Ridge. It is a factor in why responsible, highly paid people did not identify these deficiencies and fix them."

Carson claims DOE wants to suppress his allegations because they point blame at the people within his office at DOE headquarters who are supposed to be overseeing the safety of operations in Oak Ridge.

Carson claims that the "chilled atmosphere for safety" prevents certain safety programs from being carried out according to DOE standards.

One such example, which he has noted in his safety reports, is DOE's accident investigation. DOE is supposed to investigate accidents and make sure that its workers employ the corrective measures that are proposed in the investigation of the accident.

"About 80 accident investigations have been conducted in Oak Ridge since 1980, and to my knowledge, few if any of those cases have been closed," he said, adding that a case is closed when DOE confirms that the proper changes have been made following the accident.

Carson said that he also has noted similar flaws in his investigation of DOE's employee concerns program in Oak Ridge. This program is supposed to make sure that the proper changes in safety practices can be made if an employee has a concern.

Carson said his supervisors have not assigned him any work in several months, which he claims is yet another form of reprisal. He has a pending complaint before the Merit System Protection Board about the change in his work duties as well as continued poor performance evaluations.

Copyright 1998 The Oak Ridger