Workers learn more about possible compensation

Local workers who may have earned illnesses dating back to the Cold War were able to learn more about possible compensation Wednesday and Thursday.
The U.S. Department of Labor visited Pittsburg, to provide information about a new class of former employees at Spencer Chemical Co./Jayhawk Works recently added to the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act’s (EEOICPA) Special Exposure Cohort (SEC). The department’s Traveling Resource Center staff was also available to assist individuals with filing claims under the EEOICPA.
“Basically, it’s a compensation program administered by the Department of Labor and focuses on employees who may have been hurt by the work they did during the Cold War,” said Dolline Hatchett, with the department’s office of public affairs. “These people became ill as a result of working in the nuclear weapons industry.”
Someone who is included in a designated SEC class of employees and is diagnosed with a specified cancer may be eligible for benefits under the act. Hatchett said the traveling group helped to raise awareness about the program as well.
Hatchett said the eligible workers were those diagnosed with different forms of illness, often cancers, who worked at Spencer Chemical/Jayhawk Works from Jan. 1, 1956 through Dec. 31, 1961.
The employee must have worked for at least 250 workdays occurring either solely under this employment or in combination with workdays within the parameters established for other classes of employees in the SEC.
Survivors of qualified Spencer Chemical Co./Jayhawk Works employees may also be entitled to benefits.
“It can get fairly technical,” Hatchett said. “We just want to help walk these folks through the process. It’s an outreach effort.”