A Hanford whistleblower who changed companies this year filed a federal complaint Tuesday that alleges he suffered retaliation at his second employer.

Matt Taylor, a Teamsters truck driver from Richland, filed the complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor in Seattle, naming RCI Environmental Inc. and Bechtel Hanford Inc. as defendants.

Taylor's complaint contended a safety-related dispute he had with a previous employer, Roy F. Weston Co., led to a hostile work atmosphere and a quick layoff at RCI Environmental. His stay at RCI lasted from Oct. 21 to Nov. 1.

Both companies are subcontractors of Bechtel.

"This shows that this is not just a Weston issue, but a Hanford issue in that he was treated that way," said his attorney, Tom Carpenter of the Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower advocacy organization.

Bechtel spokeswoman Sue Kuntz said the company could not comment because it had not seen the complaint.

Bechtel will cooperate fully with the federal labor department, she said.

Neither Taylor nor the appropriate RCI officials could be reached for comment Tuesday.

Taylor is a member of Teamsters Local No. 839 and had worked for Weston during the 1998 excavation of a waste burial site just north of the 300 Area.

That excavation effort discovered an unsuspected cache of 1,500 oil-filled barrels containing uranium shavings and chips. The discovery halted the project.

In January 1999, Taylor - still with Weston - discovered that some of the oil contained carcinogenic polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. He raised safety questions on that and on other issues concerning an unsafely loaded truck and windblown dust in a radiological area.

Later, he filed a complaint with the federal labor department, saying his superiors responded to his concerns with yelling, sarcasm and derogatory graffiti.

The matter was resolved with Taylor and Weston parting ways, and Taylor received a financial settlement of an undisclosed amount.

The new complaint filed Tuesday alleges that the Teamsters dispatched him on Oct. 21 to work for RCI at a waste burial site near D and DR Reactors on a job expected to last 112 to 2 years. The complaint said a co-worker and a union steward told Taylor that Bechtel and RCI were keeping a close eye on him because of the Weston matter.

The complaint also said Taylor heard co-workers talk about a smell from a solvent vapor. He passed the information to his superiors and suggested that equipment be brought in to check to out the vapors. The managers told him no such equipment was available at that area, the complaint said.

The document said Taylor later said he would file a written safety incident report on his concerns about the smell.

When he turned in the report on Nov. 1, a supervisor told him work was slowing down, and he was being laid off that day.

His union local's business agent was surprised Taylor was laid off because the agent had just sent a new driver to that same project, the complaint said.

Taylor's complaint seeks back pay, a guarantee of freedom from reprisals and an unspecified amount of compensatory and punitive damages.