Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) has been ordered to pay $216,080 in back pay and compensation to two whistleblowers it removed from the job in 2012. The computer specialist employees had raised issues with a new electronic medical system when CSC held the Hanford Site occupational medicine contract. In 2014 the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ordered CSC to pay $186,000 in back wages to former workers Kirtley Clem and Matthew Spencer. CSC appealed the ruling, leading to the new order by an administrative law judge after a trial held over several days in November and then continued for several more days in February.
Clem and Spencer argued at staff meetings and told their supervisor and managers that a new electronic medical system was not working correctly. They also brought the matter to the DOE Employee Concerns Program, but the system was deployed anyway. Labor Department Administrative Law Judge Christopher Larsen concluded that the program could put workers at risk, including by not accurately tracking medical restrictions. It created the potential for workers at risk of chronic beryllium disease to be assigned to work in areas where beryllium was present.
Clem and Spencer were suspended from their jobs in September 2012 after raising their concerns. Although CSC accused them then of sharing confidential information with a competitor, the company did not make that argument at trial. The watchdog organization Hanford Challenge, which helped represent the workers, pointed out that the judge characterized some of CSC’s arguments at trial as “an astonishing display of chutzpah.”
CSC officials could not agree on who made the decision to suspend the two workers. The company also said it had not acted in retaliation after it withheld “special pay” the workers had been offered for their long hours of work on the new system. “Whatever this evidentiary hash may be, it is not clear, and it is not convincing,” Larsen said in his order, which was issued last week. CSC also has been ordered to pay interest and attorney fees and costs.
