DOE Press Release November 8, 2017 "WASHINGTON, D.C.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today issued a Preliminary Notice of Violation (PNOV) to Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, LLC (SRNS) for a violation of worker safety and health requirements. The violation is associated with worker retaliation by SRNS against an employee at the Savannah River Site in 2015...DOE proposes an escalated civil penalty of $320,000. DOE considers the safety significance of the Part 851 violation as particularly egregious given the involvement of SRNS senior management in the retaliatory act."
https://www.energy.gov/articles/department-energy-cites-savannah-river-nuclear-solutions-llc-worker-safety-and-health-0
DOE PNOV November 8, 2017 "Of particular concern to DOE is the involvement of SRNS senior management, including the past SRNS President, in the retaliation. DOE highly values an environment where employees are confident that their safety concerns are taken seriously, and where acts
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DOE PNOV against SRNS
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/11/f46/Preliminary%20Notice%20of%20Violation%2C%20Savannah%20River%20Nuclear%20Solutions%2C%20LLC_0_0.pdf
A 2016 email statement from a SRNS spokesperson said,
"We deny, in the strongest possible terms, that Ms. Black was terminated for an improper reason or in violation of any law or regulation.”
The February 23, 2017 DOE OHA Decision and Order (of reinstatement) states,
"On January 7, 2015, SRNS informed Ms. Black that her employment was terminated...The termination document, titled "Constructive Discipline Assessment and Development," indicated that Ms. Black was being terminated for "unsatisfactory job performance."...SRNS offered Ms. Black a severance package, which included a release of all claims against SRNS, but Ms. Black declined the package."
and
"As the foregoing indicates, SRNS has not brought sufficient evidence to demonstrate that: (1) it had a strong business reason for terminating Ms. Black; (2) it did not have a motive for retaliating against her; or (3) it treated her consistently with similarly situated employees. Accordingly, SRNS has failed to provide clear and convincing evidence that it would have terminated Ms. Black in the absence of her protected disclosures."
It looks like the critical retaliation mistake SRNS made was firing this ECP manager too soon after she had made "protected disclosures". SRNS may have kept the alarm bells from sounding so loud if they had successfully argued that due to a funding or business need, the ECP manager would have to find other SRNS work, but not fire her immediately.
In the interim, SRNS would have funded the former ECP manager's salary with an overhead account (like a LLNS EIT) while she searched for other assignments. While the former ECP manager looked for work, SRNS could have systematically blacklisted her from suitable assignments with non-paper trail methods.
After sufficient time had passed from her protected disclosures, SRNS could have evaluated the former ECP manager's performance primarily based on her inability to find another assignment, at which point SRNS could claim a business need to fire her.
The only problem with this method to fire a DOE contractor employee is that actively blacklisting a contractor employee while your funding their salary to look for work, can be considered account fraud, especially if the underlying goal of the contractor was to prevent temporal proximity from protected disclosures and subsequent acts of retaliation.
SRNS blatantly retaliated against this ECP manager, yet it took DOE almost 3 years to finally begin to hold SRNS accountable for their retaliatory termination of this ECP manager. It took the concerns of 3 Senators, a 2016 GAO Report on DOE whistleblowers, and a 2017 DOE IG SRNS investigation report, to finally motivate the DOE OHA to act. Thus far, not a single SRNS senior manager has been fired for their acts of retaliation.
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