Truth Versus Distortion
Here’s a story about people pooling their efforts to help working men and women. Unfortunately, the story is also about how, for political reasons, their efforts have been distorted and misrepresented.
Workers formerly employed at a Dow Chemical plant in Madison, Illinois and a General Steel Industries plant in Granite City, Illinois were exposed to radioactive materials used in fabricating nuclear weapons beginning in the 1950s. Many of them have developed cancer as a result, and they are eligible to receive compensation under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, or EEOICPA. Nearly 600 cases have been filed with the Department of Labor.
However, their claims have been mired in federal bureaucracy. To date, not a single worker has received compensation for injuries resulting from exposures at either of these plants. Some of the claimants have been waiting for five years.
All sorts of folks have gotten together to push the process forward and help these deserving victims. Senator Barack Obama is on the team. Congressman John Shimkus is equally committed to help. Dr. Daniel McKeel Jr., a retired Associate Professor of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine who played a critical role helping similarly situated Mallinckrodt workers a few years ago, is providing invaluable expert assistance.
SimmonsCooper is also helping. No one at SimmonsCooper – repeat, no one – is being paid to help. SimmonsCooper does not have a single client relationship among the workers affected nor are we trying to get any. SimmonsCooper is not soliciting lawsuits. We are performing a service to the community, just as we have in the past and just as we will continue to in the future.
The real story is about how people from different backgrounds and with different philosophies can find common cause when it comes to helping workers. Senator Obama is a Democrat. Congressman Shimkus is a Republican. Their differences don’t matter here.
If you want further details about the problem and our efforts to solve it, read Michael Shaw’s article in the May 4 St. Louis Post –Dispatch. It fairly captures the spirit driving the collective work that’s being done to help these victims.
Alas, the same cannot be said for all newspapers. One small newspaper, with a history of attacking lawyers who represent injured clients, characterized the effort on behalf of the victims as an attempt by SimmonsCooper to solicit lawsuits, adding a scurrilous implication that Dan McKeel is helping us in that effort.
The article was so bad, so inaccurate from start to finish, that it was withdrawn from the newspaper’s website. A retraction is still owed everyone, including the workers, along with an acknowledgement that no one wants any money except the money due to the workers.
So that’s the other story here – a sad story, indeed, about how the victims of industrial tragedy become pawns in an ideological struggle.
Comments on this Post
Previous: Disaster Waiting to Happen
Next: No Caps On Misery
