Editorial: No more delays for ill workers

Friday, March 23, 2001 | 10:07 a.m.

It would be terrible if the Labor Department is allowed to relinquish to the Justice Department the handling of applications from sick nuclear workers who are eligible for federal compensation. The new labor secretary, Elaine Chao, in a recent letter to the White House, wrote that the Justice Department should take on this responsibility since it already runs a program that provides one-time payments to uranium miners, millers and people who lived downwind from nuclear test sites. But when Congress created this program last year it set aside $60.4 million to the Labor Department for good reason, which was that it believed that agency was better equipped to do so.

As the Associated Press noted in a story this week, the Justice Department has just three attorneys, two supervisors and 14 payment clerks to handle claims under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. That small staff has had to process about 9,000 claims during the past 10 years. Some members of Congress, who oppose Chao's suggested transfer, also say that there have been substantiated complaints that this program isn't run well. The Labor Department, which oversees a worker compensation program for government employees, has more than 900 workers and receives about 19,000 wage-loss claims annually.

The White House should listen to the growing bipartisan chorus that doesn't want any more delays. It was a struggle just to get this compensation program passed over the opposition of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. Congress intended for this program to be administered swiftly -- and Chao's recommended changes would only serve to delay payments needlessly. President Bush should instead listen to Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio: "Cancer is killing my constituents right now. This will, in my judgment, inevitably result in a delay." These men and women have fought, in some cases for decades, to get what is due them -- compensation for illnesses they acquired while working on behalf of the federal government. They were lied to in the past when the government refused to acknowledge that their illnesses were tied to exposure to radiation and other harmful subst ances. The White House shouldn't allow a bad situation to become even worse by heeding Chao's poor advice.