Nuclear Waste Whistleblower Becomes Targeted Individual, Workplace Mobbed

A whistle-blower has learned the hard way, first hand, what it’s like to live life as a Targeted Individual (TI), retaliated against and then fired, after she raised dangerous nuclear weapons production waste safety concerns, but unlike most TIs, she’s found an ally in high-places.

Targeted, Workplace Mobbed for Doing Job of Saving Lives

Whistle-blower Donna Busche, after raising safety concerns at the nation’s most polluted nuclear weapons production site, was fired Tuesday from her job at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State.

Busche, like millions of other Targeted Individuals, said she faced increased hostility on the job, also called workplace mobbing. The treatment worsened before a federal court hearing last week.

She said she raised technical issues and received harassment and retaliation, describing workplace mobbing. 

Mobbing is also known as “bullying on steroids,” a horrifying new trend whereby a bully, often the employer, enlists co-workers to collude in a relentless campaign of psychological terror against a hapless target.

At the hearing a judge partially granted her motion to halt the case as her new allegations of retaliation move through the legal process. Bechtel and URS asked for her new allegations be dismissed.

“The next day was just flat ugly,” she said.

Targets are usually anyone “different” from the organizational norm. “Usually, victims are competent, educated, resilient, outspoken, challenge the status quo, are more empathic or attractive and tend to be women, aged 32 to 55. Targets also can be racially different or part of a minority group,” says Sophi Henshaw in Bullying at Work: Workplace Mobbing is on the Rise.

The target receives ridicule, humiliation, and eventually, removal from the workplace. It leaves the victim reeling with no idea what happened or why. It takes away a person’s safety in the world, dignity, identity and belonging and damages his or her mental and physical health. The effects also radiate outward toward the target’s partner, family, friends and even community.

Gossip and innuendo spread behind closed doors before the target is aware of what’s happening, as previously loyal co-workers are enlisted to provide personal information that substantiates damaging rumors. Often the person instigating the mobbing is… threatened in some way by the target. People with personality disorders often employed tactics such as “splitting,” which pits members of a team against each other in to exact revenge against a perceived slight or insult by the target.

At least 30 percent of bullying is mobbing — and the tendency is rising.

Busche’s complaints are among a string of whistle-blower and other claims related to design and safety of an unfinished nuclear weapons waste treatment plant at Hanford.

“Today’s decision to fire yet another Hanford whistleblower shows that nothing has changed at the Energy Department when it comes to stifling dissent,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in a statement.

Busche, 50, who was called into the office Tuesday morning and fired, said, “I turned in my key and turned in my badge and left the building,” Busche told the Associated Press in a phone interview.

Busche worked for URS Corp., that is helping build a $12 billion plant to turn Hanford’s most dangerous wastes into glass. The plant’s construction has been halted over safety concerns. 

Central to cleanup is managing 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste left from decades of plutonium production for the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal.

“The waste is stored in 177 aging underground tanks, many of which have leaked, threatening the groundwater and the neighboring Columbia River,” reports Salon.

Busche filed complaints with the federal government, alleging she has suffered retaliation since filing her original safety complaint in 2011.

Hanford was created by the federal government in the 1940s as part of the top-secret project to build the atomic bomb, and cleanup costs today run about $2 billion annually.

Bushe’s colleague, Walter Tamosaitis was also targeted and fired from URS after blowing the whistle on safety concerns about the plant, after 44 years of employment.

Busche says their firings will have a chilling effect on anyone else who raises safety concerns at Hanford. She said via Skype: ”One of my previous subordinates says that they’re actually afraid of getting fired for doing their job.”

The company disagrees that Busche suffered retaliation or was treated unfairly, typical of workplace mobbers.

Senator Becomes Targeted Individual Hero

While the number of Targeted Individuals (TIs) is on the rise, they usually find they have nowhere to turn for support or justice. It appears as though some TIs have a new hero.

Sen. Wyden said he will ask the Government Accountability Office to investigate the pattern of contractor retaliation against whistleblowers at Hanford and also DOE’s lack of response to these actions.

Whether taking on powerful interests, listening to constituents at one of his famous town hall meetings or standing up for Oregonians on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Wyden is has gained the reputation of an effective leader on issues that matter most. 

“When DOE sits back and allows its contractors to systematically remove whistleblowers, it is clear that DOE is part of the problem, despite all of the rhetoric to the contrary,” Wyden said. “I plan to personally hold accountable DOE officials for the unchecked retaliation against whistleblowers who have revealed major, legitimate risks to public safety.”

In Australia, a government inquiry revealed calls about workplace bullying had increased 70 percent in three years.

Statistics show bullying of Targeted Individuals affects one in three employees and that one in two have witnessed such a person become and suffer being a Targeted Individual but did nothing about it.

Moreover, the actual incidence of bullying and harassing a Targeted Individual is likely to be much higher.

For every bullied Targeted Indivudal in the workplace case reported, eight to 20 cases go unreported (Faure-Brac, 2012).

“[O]rganizations are driven by the dollar and accountable only to shareholders and directors. This creates toxic environments where managers turn a blind eye to bullying and mobbing and may even encourage it” (Duffy & Sperry, 2013).

Professor and practising psychologist, Heinz Leymann estimated 15% of suicides in Sweden could be directly attributed to workplace mobbing.

Leymann noted one possible side-effect of mobbing is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), often misdiagnosed. After this discovery, he successfully treated thousands of victims at his clinic in Sweden. (Also see a report by Linda Shallcross on her research on the experience of 212 self identified targets of mobbing from public sector organisations, Workplace Mobbing: Expulsion , Exclusion, and Transformation, School of Management, Griffith University, 2008). 

While the best practice is for such TIs to leave the workplace once it’s realized they are being mobbed, once the targeting has begun, most mobbed individuals find the crime is so well organized at every level of society, they cannot find meaningful employment elsewhere.

Sources: Salon, Tri-City Herald, Psych Central, Linda Shallcross