Watchdog faults Energy Department over whistleblower retaliation

The Department of Energy (DOE) needs to do more to crack down on whistleblower retaliation by the contractor companies that run its facilities, a watchdog report concluded.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found Thursday that the department relies heavily on contractors’ self-assessments of their compliance with whistleblower rules, and rarely orders independent reviews.

{mosads}Meanwhile, DOE’s programs for whistleblowers and its remedies for employees alleging retaliation are dense, difficult to navigate and often require professional legal advice.

And GAO said DOE rarely punishes contractors for retaliating against whistleblowers, only taking action twice in the last two decades.

“DOE’s reluctance to hold contractors accountable may diminish contractor employee confidence in mechanisms for raising concerns and seeking whistleblower protection,” the report concluded.

The department has a rocky history with contractor whistleblowers going back years, which spurred three Senate Democrats to request Thursday’s report in 2014.

But after GAO investigators spoke with Sandra Black, an employee at the Savannah River Nuclear Site in South Carolina who was responsible for handling whistleblower claims, Black was fired for saying that her employees harassed her and tried to interfere with her investigations, the senators said.

“We thought that we had seen it all. Today, however, it seems that there is a whole new precedent,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said Thursday at a news conference, referring both to the report and Black’s case.

“This new Government Accountability Office report makes clear that the Department of Energy has utterly and completely failed to protect whistleblowers from retaliation,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said at the conference. “The currency of whistleblowers is the truth. But at the Department of Energy, whistleblowers are paid with harassment and retaliation.”

Wyden, Markey and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) brought Black to the event to speak, along with Walter Tamosaitis, who in 2015 won a $4.1 million settlement from a contractor at the Hanford Site in Washington. Tamosaitis was allegedly fired for bringing up nuclear safety concerns, the Los Angeles Times reported.

DOE agreed with nearly all of GAO’s recommendations on improving its whistleblower systems.

“The Department of Energy recognizes that sustaining a healthy safety culture is a continuous endeavor. That is why we have taken deliberate steps to ensure compliance with the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, and have undertaken to emphasize the importance of safety culture across the department’s leadership,” a spokeswoman said, adding that its working to update its regulations on whistleblower treatment.