Mark Baltazar was between jobs operating heavy construction
equipment in Texas when he heard American contractors in Iraq were
paying $84,000 a year for his skills while working for the
largest military contractor in Iraq, Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root
(KBR).
Since the work would be outside the United States,
it sounded all the sweeter -- the money would be tax-free.
He figured
he’d be making more than enough to help buy his family a
new home and pay off some mounting bills.
One month and three weeks after Baltazar arrived in Iraq, a suicide bomber near
Mosul blew those plans to smithereens.
The 32-year-old father of five had just
finished lunch on Dec. 21, 2004, in the sprawling KBR mess tent at Camp Merez
where hundreds of US troops, Iraqi security forces and civilian contractors were eating. The bomber walked in
unseen before triggering one of the bloodiest attacks on US forces since the
occupation of Iraq began. The blast swept
through the tent, hurled Baltazar into the air and sent him
crashing down over the back of a chair.
Twenty-two were left dead, including seven KBR employees and subcontractors. One was a co-worker of
Baltazar's who had just left the table to get some ice
cream. It was the last time Baltazar saw him alive.
Sixty-nine others were wounded and among those were 24 civilian contractors.
Battling for Insurance Benefits
Now, six months later, like hundreds of other civilian
workers injured in Iraq, Baltazar is still battling with
KBR's insurance adjusters as he nurses the back injury and
other wounds from the blast.
Instead of saving for a new home, Baltazar finds himself
worse off then he was when he left for Iraq. He's jobless
because of his injuries, living in a Houston apartment, and
relying on a $368 disability check every two weeks.
"You make more money working at McDonald's,"
says Baltazar, a native of Odessa, Texas who moved to
Houston 14 years ago.
And he continues to be denied full insurance coverage
worth more than $1,000 a week as outlined in the Defense
Base Act (DBA), according to his lawyer, Gary Pitts, who
says the money would go a long way to supporting Baltazar
and his family.
The DBA requires businesses working overseas under U.S.
funded contracts to provide insurance coverage for injuries
and disabilities of all employees. Subcontractors are
responsible for providing similar coverage to their workers.
Baltazar's projected DBA amount is a sum based on the
comparative annual income he would be making if he hadn't
been injured.
Immediately after the bombing, KBR medics x-rayed
Baltazar's back. They gave him morphine and said he would be
fine. But after spending two days resting in his trailer, he told his supervisors he wanted medical
leave to go back to the United States and see a doctor of
his choice,
Balthazar recalls.
"I wanted to return to work after some medical
leave," Baltazar explains. "They said my injuries
weren't severe enough to send me home, so I either had to
stay in Iraq or quit."
Baltazar went home. Since January, he has been getting spinal injections and
visiting a physical therapist three times a week to help
ease the pain of the back injury he sustained when he landed
on the chair. He also suffers from hearing loss and blurry
eyesight because of the blast and receives psychological
counseling for his shell shock -- known as post-traumatic
stress disorder.
Shell Shocked Scars
Commonly known as PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder often
appears as a temporary psychological condition, but it can
also last a lifetime. Symptoms include major depression and
anxiety that can lead to suicidal behavior. The disorder
haunts an estimated 15 to 17 percent of soldiers returning
from Iraq, according to a study published by the New England
Journal of Medicine in their summer 2004 issue. The
condition is also currently affecting an unknown number of
contractors who witnessed the horrors of war firsthand.
Little data is available on just how widespread the problem
may be among civilian workers. According to Dr. Charles
Figley, Director of the Psychological Stress Research
Program at Florida State University and one of the country's
most prominent PTSD experts, the number of contractors
suffering from the disorder will likely remain an estimate.
"No one is counting, no one is noticing and no one
cares," said Figley, a former Marine and Vietnam
veteran who believes that the risks contractors face are the
main reason that many of them earn high salaries.
Figley predicts that a PTSD study would document the danger
to contractors and force wages up even higher because fewer
skilled Americans would be willing to work in Iraq.
"These people are non-combatants in a combat
environment, but I am sure there are no studies about
them." Figley adds. "Besides, it would be bad for
business."
PTSD is bad for Baltazar as well.
"I wake up with nightmares, sometimes four times a
night, sweating and yelling," he says.
It takes enormous courage to admit psychological baggage
brought home from war, but for contractors back in the US it
is necessary for recovery.
Drenched in Blood and Taken for dead
Like Baltazar, another KBR employee, Samuel Walker, says KBR
denied him medical leave after he was injured in the Camp
Merez bombing. His only options at that point were to quit
or stay in Iraq. Walker, who now lives in Augusta, Ga.,
worked for over a year in Iraq as a fitness and recreation
supervisor at the camp. An Army veteran of 24 years, Walker
joined KBR one month after retiring as a Combat
Communications Specialist. He recalls that he was eating
French fries when the explosion blasted through the mess
tent.
"Body parts were flying all over and pieces of flesh
flying in my face," Walker says.
When it was over, the former contractor was drenched in the
blood of the victims around him and rescue workers took him
for dead. "I was so close to the bomber," he adds.
"There was copper wire from the bomb embedded in my
jacket."
Walker took a full blast to the side of his head and
shrapnel pitted his body. But when KBR medics treated him
following the bombing, he says they merely rubbed Vaseline
on his burns and gave him Motrin for pain.
"For two days I told them my side was hurting but they
said I would be okay, and wouldn't give me medical
leave," Walker says.
A week and a half later, like Baltazar, Walker quit and
headed home to Houston. Now he complains of ringing in his
ears and migraine headaches. He's in physical therapy for
his neck, back and right knee. Walker also believes suffers
from PTSD. Questions about his work in Iraq, scenes from the
TV news, even French fries, all bring back the moment when
the bomb flashed before him.
"I can't even walk into a restaurant without
remembering the screaming, the hollering, the yelling and
everyone thinking I was dead," Walker says. With the
memories haunting him daily, Walker knows it's unlikely that
he'll be able to re-enter the workforce. In the meantime,
he's waiting on his claim for disability and medical bills.
"I haven't gotten one red cent from them," Walker
says.
KBR responds
KBR insists that it is committed to ensuring its employees
receive quality medical treatment.
"KBR employees work side-by-side with the troops, and
they do the jobs that, here at home, are routine, such as
planning and preparing meals," said KBR spokeswoman
Cathy Gist. "In a war zone, however, these jobs require
courage, resolve and skill."
When asked if employees had been denied medical leaves after
being injured at Camp Merez, Gist answered indirectly.
"As KBR's history of contracting for the U.S military
in remote environments continues, the company remains
committed to ensure[ing] its employees receive quality
medical treatment and care, either locally or by means of
evacuation to a more advanced medical facility as dictated
by the nature of the situation, " she told CorpWatch,
Growing logjam
Like Baltazar and Walker, there are numerous former
contractors waiting for insurance companies to resolve
claims related to war zones.
"Insurance companies are not used to doing this sort of
thing in the numbers they are coming in," says
Washington, DC., attorney Mark Schaffer, who also
represented a Merez bombing victim who received medical
leave, but only after bickering with adjusters for three
months. "Everyone is playing catch up."
Insurers are so behind that the pile-up has turned into a
serious logjam within the Department of Labor, which is
responsible for overseeing all DBA claims. Recently the
department's administrative law judges, who preside over the
most contentious claims, adopted a policy to expedite cases
involving the war in Iraq and to pressure insurers to act
more quickly.
Meanwhile, insurers are so behind that the pile-up of
Iraq-related claims that there is now a serious logjam
within the Department of Labor, which is responsible for
overseeing all DBA claims. Recently the department's
administrative law judges, who preside over the most
contentious claims, adopted a policy to expedite cases
involving the war in Iraq and to pressure insurers to act
more quickly.
"We're starting to get more cases, absolutely,"
says Richard D. Mills, District Chief Judge for the
Louisiana District Office, whose work includes claims from
Houston, KBR's headquarters. "We have been asked to
finish up on some cases within 45 to 60 days."
As of May 10, death and injury claims related to the war in
Iraq total 2,919, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Of those claims, insurers have disputed 1,538 -- more than
half of the total -- and 821 remain unresolved.
These figures may not reflect the true number of workers
eligible for benefits, because many don't know they may be
covered, let alone the full extent of their benefits, says
Schaffer.
"People are often stuck in Iraq, unaware of any
entitlement," he observes, adding that the prospect of
continuing work outside the United States also tempts
employees to keep mum about their injuries. "Sometimes
people are afraid to go to the doctor because they will get
sent home," adds Schaffer. "And if you don't stay
330 days, you lose your tax free salary. Everyone is over
there to make money and I haven't seen anyone turn down a
paycheck yet."
Even U.S. citizens who have come home and families who have
lost a husband or father are often unfamiliar with their
insurance coverage, says attorney Pitts. The Houston lawyer
represents 35 clients with claims against KBR's insurer,
American International Group Inc.
(AIG).
"AIG is dragging its heels and they only have three
adjusters working the claims, so they are swamped,"
says Pitts.
A New York-based firm, AIG is widely involved with
business in Iraq and is presently under investigation by the
Securities and Exchange Commission for its accounting
practices and for possible stock fraud.
AIG declined comment. "We don't discuss clients with
the press," company spokesman Andy Silver told
CorpWatch.
Pitts is representing Baltazar and Walker and believes that
their stories speak for themselves. "If anyone has a
legitimate claim for post-traumatic stress and disability,
it's these guys. They were picking flesh off
themselves."
Pitts fights to get weekly compensation for as long as an
employee is off work, medical bills and two-thirds of one's
salary if a person is permanently out of work when
everything medically possible has been done. Families that
lose their primary income provider are also eligible for
lifetime support as long as the surviving spouse does not
remarry, leading Pitts to estimate that life-long disability
claims for a widow and her family could top out at around $2
million.
"There's a lot of money to be saved by keeping people
in the dark if you look at it as a pure numbers game,"
says Pitts who, in addition to specializing in DBA, is
pursuing an ongoing international lawsuit against companies
that helped Saddam Hussein produce sarin and mustard gas.
Noting that very few attorneys specialize in DBA law because
the fees are low and set by the Labor Department, he adds:
"I am afraid there are a bunch of widows in the
hinterland who don't even know what the DBA is, nor an
attorney who practices it."
There are likely many workers around the world without
knowledge about their insurance coverage. Tens of thousands
of workers from India, Pakistan, Turkey, the Philippines and
other countries have been recruited to work on military
bases in Iraq to perform blue-collar jobs that include food
preparation, sanitation, laundry services and construction
work. They are often paid less than $1,000 a month and work
largely for subcontractors under other subcontractors
working for the prime U.S. funded contractor.
The General Accountability Office (GAO), the lead
investigative arm of Congress, recently concluded that it is
impossible to accurately estimate the total number of U.S.
or foreign nationals working for U.S. government contracts
in Iraq. The GAO's investigation was prompted by concerns in
Congress about insurance costs that Iraq contractors are
obligated to carry, which are then passed on to the
government.
"It is difficult to aggregate reliable data on the cost
of DBA insurance due in part to the large number of
contractors and the multiple levels of subcontractors
performing work in Iraq," the GAO reported.
"Lacking reliable aggregate data, we were unable to
calculate the total cost of DBA insurance to the government
or the impact of DBA insurance costs on reconstruction
activities in Iraq."
Responding to the GAO's report, Labor Department official
Victoria A. Lipnic said that assuring all contracted
employees have insurance coverage is an
"impossibility" without having someone in Iraq to
"actually demand to see proof of coverage for every
level of subcontracted work."
In other words, the number of claims yet to come may be
unfathomable. "The whole legal and factual situation is
just like the wild west," Pitts offers.
Only the personal stories are tangible, but Baltazar and
Walker say KBR has never called to find out how they are
doing.
"I wanted to go back to work for them when I got
well," Walker says. But he has since changed his mind.
"I don't like the way I have been treated," he
adds.
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