Whistleblowers Punished

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR ADMINISTRATIVE REVIEW BOARD

DOUGLAS EVANS, ARB Case No. 08-059

ALJ Case No. 2008-CAA-0003

Complainant,
against,

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY,

Respondent.

COMPLAINANT DOUGLAS EVANS BRIEF

From Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)

Washington, DC — In a stinging rebuke, unions representing the vast majority of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists, attorneys and other specialists have vowed to cut off future discussions with embattled Administrator Stephen Johnson, according to a letter released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Already in the hot seat for overruling staff advice that he was legally required to grant California’s requested waiver to regulate greenhouse gases, Johnson now faces a litany of charges that he has also been duplicitous on an array of other scientific integrity, information suppression and workplace relations issues.

In a February 29, 2008 letter, the presidents of 19 locals from four unions representing more than 10,000 staff from EPA headquarters, all but one of its regional offices and seven lab complexes served notice that they will “suspend” further involvement with the National Labor-Management Partnership Council. The Partnership Council is a nearly ten-year old forum for resolving disagreements.

The joint leap-day letter cites repeated instances of broken pledges or bad faith by Johnson, including –

Johnson Must Testify in an up-coming EEOC Hearing!

Dr. MARSHA COLEMAN-ADEBAYO first became a whistleblower at the EPA while representing the Agency to the White House on assignment to South Africa. She discovered that a US multinational corporation was responsible for poisoning a community outside of Pretoria, the capital of South Africa. She also faced racial and sexual harassment. She was called racial names, such as uppity N*** and told in senior staff meetings that she fit in because she was considered an “honorary white man.” The retaliation was brutal under the EPA Carol Browner administration, but the retaliation has worsened in recent years, under the Johnson administration. Coleman-Adebayo has successfully teleworked since she became seriously ill as a result of working in what a federal jury called a hostile work environment for over a decade. In an act of retaliation, after the Agency decided to end settlement discussions, she was transferred to the Office of the Administrator, to work under Steve Johnson’s staff. The first order of business was to create a position for Dr. Coleman-Adebayo that was outside her area of expertise.

Dr. Coleman-Adebayo was ordered to disregard her physician’s orders and return to the hostile office work environment of the EPA, where she had received death and rape threats. When Congress found out about the escalating level of retaliation, Congressional members Sheila Jackson-Lee, John Conyers, Henry Waxman, Tom Davis, and Chris Van Hollen wrote to Steve Johnson offering Coleman-Adebayo a detail in Congress. Johnson, wrote back through a surrogate denying the congressional requests and demanding, despite warnings from her physicians that she was in imminent danger of a stroke or heart attack, that she return to the hostile work environment.

Mary Gade is not a traditional whistleblower. But Steve Johnson's EPA is not a traditional agency. Gade was forced out for doing her job, not for leaking news of wrong doing. She was, until recently, the top environmental regulator in the Midwest. Johnson forced her out because she went after Dow Chemical for not cleaning up dioxin-saturated soil and sediment extending 50 miles beyond Dow’s Midland, Mich., plant, contaminating both Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron.

Michael Hawthorne reported in the Chicago Tribune:

"Gade told the Tribune she resigned after two aides to national EPA administrator Stephen Johnson took away her powers as regional administrator and told her to quit or be fired by June 1. ... Five months ago, a top U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official gave Mary Gade a performance rating of 'outstanding.' On Thursday, the same official told her to quit or be fired as the agency's top regulator in the Midwest."

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