ML20077D163
| ML20077D163 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Fort Saint Vrain  |
| Issue date: | 05/10/1993 |
| From: | PUBLIC SERVICE CO. OF COLORADO |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20077D103 | List: |
| References | |
| FOIA-93-600, FOIA-93-610 NUDOCS 9412080081 | |
| Download: ML20077D163 (150) | |
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_.....~.w PUBLIC SERVICE COMPANY OF COLORADO FORT ST VRAIN NUCLEAR GENERATING STATION ENFORCEMENT CONFERENCE MAY 10,1993 ARLINGTON, TEXAS j
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O'MALLE93-600 PDR L
O AGENDA l
INTRODUCTION AND OPENING REMARKS A. C. CRA WFORD.
PSC DESTAFFING PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIENCE D.W. WAREMBOURG BASIS FOR DECISION TO RELEASE COMPLAINANT l
F.J. BORST i
CONCLUDING REMARKS A.C. CRAWFORD
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INTRODUCTION AND OPENING REMARKS A.C. CRAWFORD THERE WAS NO VIOLATION OF 10 CFR 50.7 AT FORT ST VRAIN RELEASE OF THE COMPLAINANT WAS PART OF THE DESTAFFING REQUIRED BY THE PERMANENT SHUTDOWN OF FORT ST VRAIN AND THE INABILITY TO SHIP SPENT FUEL TO IDAHO, AND WAS CONSISTENT WITH THE CRITERIA SET FORTH FOR DESTAFFING FORT ST VRAIN THE COMPLAINANT WAS NOT ON THE ORIGINAL LIST FOR RELEASE, AND WAS IN FACT PLACED ON THE RELEASE LIST AFTER MANAGEMENT'S EVALUATION OF HIS ABILITY TO WORK WITH THE HP ORGANIZATION AS A TEAM MEMBER FORT ST VRAIN DESTAFFING EXPERIENCE DEMONSTRATES THAT DISCRIMINATION DID NOT AND DOES NOT EXIST PSC HAS MAINTAINED AND ADVERTISED A POLICY OF STOP WORK AUTHORITY PSC HAS ALWAYS MAINTAINED AN OPEN POLICY WITH REFERENCE TO NRC COMMUNICATIONS AND EMPLOYEE CONTACT WITH THE 4
NRC PSC HAS LEARNED HOW TO DEAL MORE APPR.OPRIATELY WITH CONTRACTOR PERSONNEL PROBLEMS L
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l PSC DESTAFFING PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIENCE D.W. WAREMBOURG BACKGROUND i
DESTAFFING WAS RECOGNIZED AS A SIGNIFICANT CHALLENGE RETENTION OF APPROPRIATE PERSONNEL M FULFHL I2 CENSE CONDITIONS RETENTION OF APPROPRIATE EXPERTISE FOR DEFUEUNG AND DECOMMISSIONING RETENTION OF EMPLOYEE MORALE AND PRODUCTIVITY NUCLEAR OPERATIONS PERSONNEL POLICY PLAN (NOPP) WAS DEVELOPED FOR DESTAFFING FORT ST VRAIN PERSONNEL NOPP DEVELOPED WITH EMPLOYEE PARTICIPAHONAND INPUT l
DESTAFFING PHILOSOPHY DEVELOPED M CONTROL AND MAINTAIN CONSISTENCYIN ADMINISTRATION OF THE NOPP
w' PSC DESTAFFING PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIENCE D.W. WAREMBOURG '
PHILOSOPHY NOPP CONSIDERATIONS INCLUDE:
EEO AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION GOAI2 AND OBJECTIVES 10 CFR 50 AND TECI9!ICAL SPECIFICATION COMPUANCE
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CONTRA CTOR DESTAFFING BEFORE PSC PERSONNEL WHENEVER POSSIBLE FUNCTIONAL NEEDS TO COMPLETE DEFUEUNG AND DECOMMISSIONING QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE APPUC LBLE ID DEFUEUNG AND DECOMMISSIONING ABIUTY OFINDIVIDUALS TO WORK TOGETHER AS A TEAM SENIORITY-BARGAINING UNITLABOR AGREEMENTPRIMAR1LY; SOME CONSIDERATION OUTSIDE THE BARGAINING UNIT PERSONAL PREFERENCE AND HARDSHIP CASES i
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L PSC DESTAFFING PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIENCE i
D.W. WAREMBOURG EXPERTZNCE I
SINCE AUGUST 1989, PSC HAS DESTAFFED FROM 527 PSC-EMPLOYEES TO PRESENT STAFF OF 98 WITHOUT ANY FORMAL DESTAFFING COMPLAINTS I
.SINCE AUGUST 1989, PSC HAS DESTAFFED FROM 358 CONTRACTORS TO PRESENT STAFF OF 24 WITHOUT ANY FORMAL DESTAFFING COMPLAINTS OTHER THAN THE SUBJECT CASE THE ABOVE SUCCESS RECORD DEMONSTRATES THAT THE PSC DESTAFFING PHILOSOPHY AND THE NOPP HAVE BEEN APPLIED AND ADMINISTERED FAIRLY AND CONSISTENTLY PSC DOES NOT BELIEVE THAT THE PROVISIONS OF 10 CFR 50.7 i
WERE VIOLATED IN THIS CASE - MOREOVER, FSV HAS NOT.
EXPERIENCED ANY 50.7 COMPLAINTS DURING ITS -ENTIRE OPERATIONAL LIFETIME i
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BASIS FOR DECISION TO RELEASE COMPLAINANT F.J. BORST BACKGROUND DESTAFFING - NECESSITY AND PLANNING l
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EVENTS OF EARLY MARCH,1991 EVENTS LEADING TO THE DECISION TO RELEASE BBEDIATELY PSC FOLLOWUP ACTIONS COMPLAINT hECHANISMS
BASIS FOR DECISION TO RELEASE COMPLAINANT F.J. BORST 1
BACKGROUND KEY BELIEFS KEY INITIATIVES ISSUES REQUIRING ATTENTION HOT SER VICE FA CILITY EVENT - SEPTEMBER 19, 1990 LACK OF PROCEDURAL CONSISTENCY
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LACK OF TEAMWORK / CLIQUES / BACKBITING LA CK OF FUTURE EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES WITH PSC LACK OF MANAGEMENTFOLLOWUP A BIAS FOR ACTION t
HP ISSUES LIST TURNOVER MEETINGS -ISSUE DU JOUR
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BASIS FOR DECISION TO RELEASE COMPLAINANT F.J. BORST DESTAFFING - NECESSITY AND PLANNING NEED BASED ON UNCERTAINTIES SURROUNDING DEFUELING FEBRUARY 22,1991 - DESTAFFING PLAN DEVELOPED FEBRUARY 26,1991 - APPROVAL TO IMPLEMENT PLAN RECEIVED EVALUATION OF CONTRACTOR EMPLOYEES BEGAN IN EARNEST OPPORTUNITY TO OBSERVE LESS SENIOR CONTRACTOR'S PERFORMANCE CONCERNS ABOUT COMPLAINANT ESCALATING l
NOTFOILOWING UP ON ASSIGNMEN15
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COMPLAINING ABOUTISSUES THAT WERE NOT HIS COMPLAINIS BY-CONTRACT AND PSC TECHNICIANS OBSERVATIONS BYDIVISIONMANAGER MARCH 4, 1991 - PUBLISHED LIST OF CONTRACTORS TO BE RELEASED DESPITE RISING DOUBTS, COMPLAINANTNOT ONLISTDUE TO PERCEIVED TECHNICAL SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE AT FORT ST VRAIN n
BASIS FOR DECISION TO RELEASE COMPLAINANT F.J. BORST EVENTS OF EARLY MARCH,1991 MARCH 6 MEETINGS CONC S RAISED ABOUT COMPLAINANT
' INVASION OF PRIVACY THEFTOF MATERIAL CONDESCENDING, SARCASTIC COMMUNICATIONS COMPLAINANT HAD BEEN COUNSM1RD BYPSC AND ARC ADDITIONAL CONCERNS RAISED ABOUT COMPLAINANT f' PERCEIVED SLANDER ABOUT COMPETENCE
) INSINCERITYIN APOLOGYABOUT OFFENSIVEA CTIONS i PERCEIVED SEXUAL HARASSMENT OF HP IECHNICIAN OtEFUSAL 70 CHANGE BEHAVIOR MARCH 7 POLL OF PSC HP TECHNICIANS UNANIMOUSSUPPORTFOR RETAININGLESS SENIOR CONIRA CTORs MARCH 8 MEETING WITH COMPLAINANT EXPRESSED MANAGEMENT CONCERN WITH ATRTUDE AND BEHAVIORS PROVIDED AN OPPORTUNITY TO DEMONSTRA TE WHLINGNESS TO
' CHANGE JOMPLAINANTSTATED HE WOULD NOT CHANGE BEHAVIORS DECISION TO RELEASE COMPLAINANT MADE ON MARCH 8 D VISIONMANAGER INFORMED, CONCURRED WITH DECISION COMPLAINANT INFORMED OF RELEASE ON MARCH 21 - 3 WEEKS NOTICE DUE TO SUBSEQUENT EVENTS, COMPLAINANT RELEASED ON MARCH 22,1991 i
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BASIS FOR DECISION TO RELEASE COMPLAINANT F.J. BORST
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EVENTS LEADING TO THE DECISION TO RELEASE IMMEDIATELY COMPLAINANT RESPONSE TO RELEASE NOTIFICATION HP SUPERVISOR OBSERVED ABERRANTBEHAVIOR ON MARCH 21 DIVISIONMANAGER OBSERVED ABERRANTBEHA VIOR ONMARCH 22 DECISION TO RELEASE IMMEDIATELY BASED ON:
PERCEIVED T!BEA15 BY COMPLAINANT ON MARCH 21
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CONCERNS ABOUTFITNESS FOR DUTY / SABOTAGE DISRUPTION / IMPACT ON PRODUCTIV11Y OF WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT EVALUATION OF QA INVESTIGATION DISCUSSION INITIATED BY PSC QA ON MARCH 14 QA INITIATED INVESTIGATION OF SCHEDULE DELAY A CTING HP SUPER VISOR INFORMED ON MARCH 14 - DETERMINED THATNO SAFETYISSUE EnSTED HP SUPERVISOR INFORMED ON MARCH 18 - ALSO DETERMINED THAT NO SAFE 1Y ISSUE EXISTED.
SPECIFIC INDIVIDUALS INVOLVED WERE NOT DISCUSSED ABSENCE OF SAFETY ISSUE CONFIRMED BY:
COMPLAINANT PSC QA PSC QA MANAGEMENT NRC PSCllP MANAGEMENT i
BASIS FOR DECISION TO RELEASE COMPLAINANT F.J. BORST
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1 PSC FOLLOWUP ACTIONS MARCH 28,1991 - VP HELD ALL-EMPLOYEE MEETINGS MARCH 29, 1991 - MEETING HELD WITH NRC SR RESIDENT INSPECTOR l
APRIL 1,1991 -
RADIATION PROTECTION MANAGER REMINDED STAFF OF RIGHT AND RESPONSIBILITY TO RAISE SAFETY ISSUES QA INSPECTOR MET WITH HP STAFF TO DISCUSS INVESTIGATION OF SCHEDULE IMPACT APRIL 2,1991 - MEETING HELD WITH SR RESIDENT INSPECTOR APRIL 18,1991 - VP SENT " CHILLING EFFECT" MEMO 10 ALL EMPIDYEES i
i BASIS FOR DECISION TO RELEASE COMPLAINANT F.J. BORST COMPLAINT MECIIANISMS RADIATION PROTECTION DEPARTMENT HP ISSUES LIST HP TURNOVER MEETINGS - ISSUE DU JOUR OPENDOOR POLICY FORT ST VD.AIN STANDARDSINFRAC170NREPORT(SIR)
RADIOLOGICAL OCCURRENCE REPOR75 (ROR)
PROBLEM REPORT-PSC AND WESTINGHOUSE TEAM QA MONITORINGS PSC CORPORATE i
GRIEVANCE - BARGAINING UNIT EMPLOYEES PROBLEM REVIEW-NON-BARGAINING UNITEMPLOYEES
e CONCLUDING REMARKS A.C. CRAWFORD
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KEY ISSUES PSC WAS IN A DESTAFFING MODE DESTAFFINGACCOMPUSHED UNDER STRINGENTCON7ROL WITH PRE-EXISTING CR1TERIA ONE OF THE PRIMARY CRITER!ON WAS THAT CON 7RACT PERSONNEL WERE TO BE RELEASED PRIOR M PERMANENTPSC PERSONNEL WHENEVER POSSIBLE DESTAFFING HAS BEEN ESSENTIALLY AND SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED UNDER THIS PROGRAM WITHOUT ANYDESTAFFING COMPLAINTS OTHER THAN THE SUBJECT CASE THERE WERE NO SAFETY ISSUES CONFIRMED BY COMPLAINANT, NRC SR RESIDENT INSPEC70R, PSC QA, PSC QA MANAGEMENT, AND PSC HP MANAGEMENT TIMING OF THE RELEASE DOES NOT SUPPORT VIOLATION OF 10 CFR 50.7 DECISION TO RELEASE CONTRAC70RS MADE FEBRUARY 22 CONCERNS RAISED 1D HP MANAGEMENT BY COMPLAINANT FEBRUARY 26 RELEASE LISTPUBLISHED MARCH 4 DECISION TO RELEASE COMPLAINANTMADE MARCH 8 FINAL RELEASE DATE BASED ON ABERRANT BEHAVIOR OF COMPLAINANT
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CONCLUDING REMARKS A.C. CRAWFORD CONCLUSIONS f
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PSC WILL CONTINUE TO COMPLY WITH LICENSE CONDITIONS AND REGULATORY REQUIREMENTS PSC HAS EFFECTIVE AND ONGOING COMPLAINT PROCESSES PSC NOW KNOWS HOW TO MORE EFFECTIVELY DEAL WITH CONTRACTOR PERSONNEL PROBLEMS DEAUNG WITH CONIRAC70R MANAGEMENTFOR RESOLURON DOCUMENITNG ALL CON 7RACIOR COMPLAINTS.'O CONTRACTOR MANAGEMENT PSC DID NOT RELEASE THE COMPLAINANT IN VIOLATION OF 10 CFR 50.7
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2 PUBLIC SERVICE COMPANY OF COLORADO 3
FORT ST. VRAIN NUCLEAR GENERATING STATION N f evo o A i
4 ENFORCEMENT CONFERENCE 4y WW' 5
MAY 10, 1993 6
ARLINGTON, TEXAS 7
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,f 14 15 16 ENFORCEMENT CONFERENCE 17 On the loth day of May, A.D.,
1993, beginning at 18 1:00 p.m.,
before me, Sonya Williams, a Certified Shorthand 19 Reporter in and for the State of Oklahoma in the office of the 20 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, located at 611 Ryan Plaza 21 Drive, Suite 400, in the City of Arlington, County of Tarrant 22 and State of Texas.
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ARLINGTON COURT REPORTING, INC.
24 1201 N. Watson Rd., Suite 270 Arlington. TX 76006 1-800-394 5445
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1 ENFORCEMENT CONFERENCE ATTENDEES:
2 MR. GARY SANBORN, NCR Region 4, Enforcement Officer 3
MR. DEIRDRE SPAULDING, NCR Headquarters, Electric Engineer 4
MR. PAUL MICHAUD, NCR-URFO, Project Manager 5
MR. ED HAWKINS, NCR-URFO, Deputy Director 6
MR. JAMES L. MILHOAN, NRC Region 4, Regional Adminstrator 7
MR.
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JOSEPH CALLAN, NRC Region 4, Regional Administrator 8
MR.
A.
CLEGG CRAWFORD, PSC, Vice President Electric Production
-9 MR. DONALD W. WARMEBOURGH, PSC, Manager Nuclear Operations 10 MS. SALIE O'MALLEY, PSC, Attorney at Law 11 MR. FREDERICK J. BORST, PSC, Radiation Protection Manager, l
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MR. CHARLES H. FULLER, PSC, Manager System Planning 13 MR. BILL BROWN, NRC Region 4, Regional Counsel 14 MR. HEATHER ASTWOOD, NRC Region 4, Intern 15 16 17 l
18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
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INTRODUCTION AND OPENING REMARKS 2
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3 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
My name is Clegg Crawford.
4 That's C-1-e-g-g.
And I am V.P. of Electric Production for 5
Public Service Company of Colorado.
To my right is Don 6
Warembourg, and Don Warembourg is the Program Director for 7
Decommission in Fort St. Vrain is also the present station a
manager for Fort St. Vrain.
Sitting next to my right is Salle 9
O'Malley.
She is our attorney for Fort St. Vrain.
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-And next to Salle is Ted Borst -- B-o-r-s-t, and Ted 11 Borst is our Radiation Protection Manager.
And next to Ted 12 Borst is Chuck Fuller, and Chuck Fuller is presently in Systems Planning for Public Service Company, but he was the' is 14 Station Manager at Fort St. Vrain at the time this incident 15 took place.
That's who Public Service Company ha's here.
16 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
Let me back up for the purpose of 17 starting -- we're going to start the Enforcement Conference.
You've had the introductions from Public Service Company.
At 18 this time we are here to address an apparent violation of 10 19 20 CFR 50.7.
I think you have the agenda in front of you in 21 which I will provide some introductory remarks.
22 Gary Sanborn will discuss our enforcement process, and then I will provide some comments on our perspective 23 concerning the apparent violation, and then we will ask you 24 then to make your presentation and discussions concerning the 25
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1 apparent violation.
At that particular time, after that 2
discussion, I plan on taking a short recess in which the NRC 3
staff will caucus en see if we have additional questions; and 4
then we will reconvene to have additional discussions on that.
5 And then we'll entertain your closing comments, and I will 6
provide any closing remarks the NRC may have on the 7
s Prior to asking Gary to discuss the enforcement 9
policy, I would like to go ahead and introduce members of the 10 NRC staff and ask them to introduce themselves.
)
11 I am James Milhoan; I'm the Regional Administrator.
1 12 I'm Gary Sanborn; I'm the Regional Enforcement Of'ficer.
I'm 13 Joe Callan; I'm the Director of the Division of Radiation 14 Safety and Safeguards in Region IV.
I'm Deirdre Spaulding and 15 I'm representing the office of Enforcement Headquarters.
I'm 16 Bill Brown, Regional Counsel.
17 I'm Ed Hawkins, Deputy Director of the Uranium 18 Recovery Field Office in Denver.
I'm Paul Michaud, Project 19 Manager in the Denver office for Fort St. Vrain.
I'm Heather 20 Astwood.
I'm an NRC Intern.
21 Okay.
Thank you very much.
At this time I'll ask 22 Gary Sanborn to briefly discuss our enforcement policy and 23 then answer any questions you may have on that policy.
24 GARY SANBORN:
I'm going to provide just a brief 25 description of NRC's enforcement program; in particular, the
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role of Enforcement Conferences, such as this, in that-2 program.
The NRC's enforcement program is governed by the
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commission's enforcement policy, which is published in Title 4
10 of the Code of Federal Regulations as Appendix C to Part s
II.
If you'd like copies of the most recent version of that 6
before you leave, we'd be happy to provide those for you.
7 The enforcement policy states that Enforcement a
Conferences are normally closed meetings between the NRC staff 9
and licensee representatives.
Although the NRC is opening to some conferences to public cbservation under the terms of a 11 two-year trial program begun in July, 1992, this particular 12 conference is a closed Enforcement Conference between the NRC 13 and Public Service Company of Colorado.
14 NRC's enforcement policy establishes five severity 15 levels for classifying violations of NRC requiren'ents 16 according to their safety and regulatory significance and 17 describes a variety of enforcement sanctions that may be is employed to address such violations.
19 These sanctions include: (1) notices a violation, 20 (2) monetary civil penalties, (3) and orders that may require 21 licensees to take certain actions, or in some cases, to 22 suspend licensed activities.
23 The policy provides that these same sanctions may be 24 applied to individuals who intentionally violate the 25 commission's requirements.
This was added to the policy in
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early 1992 based on the commission's adoption of deliberate
,2 misconduct rules in September of 1991.
3 An Enforcement Conference is held when inspection or l
4 investigative findings indicate that potentially significant 5
violations may have occurred.
An Enforcement Conference is r,
essentially the last step in the information-gathering process 7
before the NRC makes an enforcement decision.
The purpose of s
a conference is not to negotiate enforcement sanction, but to 9
provide a forum for discussing apparent violations, their to significance, their reasons for their occurrence, particularly 11 the root cause or causes, and the corrective actions that a 12 licensee has taken or plans to take.
13 It's very important to note that a decision to 14 conduct an Enforcement Conference does not mean that XRC has i
i 15 made a final determination that a violation has occurred or 16 that enforcement action will be taken.
The apparent violations discussed at this conference -- or in this case, 17 the apparent violation discussed at this conference -- is 18 19 subject to further review and may be revised prior to any 1
20 resulting enforcement action.
The NRC is essentially seeking information to ensure 21 22 that it has a complete understanding of the circumstances 23 surrounding any apparent violations.
This includes seeking your perspective on the information that NRC tas obtained or 24 is using to support its belief that a violation has occurred.
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We are particularly interested in whether you are challenging 2
any of the factual information the NRC is relying upon or the
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3 apparent violation and, if so, the basis for such challenges.
4 You are encouraged to present any information that you 5
consider relevant to the NRC's enforcement decision.
6 Following the conference, NRC representatives will 7
review the information obtained from its investigation, as a
well as the information gained from this Enforcement 9
Conference in order to reach decisions on whether violations 10 of requirements did occur, whether enforcement sanctions 11 should be employed and, if so, what those sanctions should be.
12 At the conclusion of this process, which usually 9 13 takes about a month, the NRC will inform you in writing of its 14 enforcement decision.
15 That concludes the summary of the enforcement policy 16 and the process that we follow, but I'd be happy to answer any 17 questions you have ~oout that.
18 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
Having no questions, I'll proceed 19 to discussion of the apparent violation and some perspectives 20 that we have on that violation.
l 21 The subject of this Enforcement Conference is an 22 apparent violation of 10 CFR 50.7.
This regulation prohibits 23 licensees from taking action against individuals because they 24 engaged in a protected activity.
In effect, licensees cannot I
15 fire or subject whistle-blowers to other forms of
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1 discrimination because they expressed concerns about
,2 compliance with requirements or matters within -- with the 3
potential to affect the safety of licensed activities.
4 Prior to asking Public Service Company to address 5
this apparent violation, I wish to make a few remarks to j
6 ensure that you understand the NRC's perspective on this 7
matter.
8 First of all, the evidence produced by the NRC's 9
Office of Investigations, as well as that gathered by the U.S.
10 Department of Lhbor, indicates that George McTiernan engaged 11 in protected activities.
McTiernan, who was a Contract Health Phy' sics 12 13 Technician employed at Fort St. Vrain facility, engaged in a 14 protected activity when, iC2 nrf*1991*, he reported to his 15 supervisor his concerns about another technician's compliance 16 with company policy with regard to leaving potentially 17 contaminated materials in a prohibited area.
18 Hevtfild"N!TQh$ed" in a protected ~56tiVityW, ' on 19 MargutMVdFfMh"#6f"1991,ohe discussed with a @ elity Assurance 20 Inspector his concerns about surveys not having been completed 1
21 on the shift prior to his.
22 From the NRC's perspective, there is a direct 23 connection between these events and PSC's decision, on March 24 the 21st of 1991, to include McTiernan in an upcoming layoff, 25 despite an earlier decis. ion announced to the HP staff, on
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March the 4th 1991, to keep McTiernan through August of '91.
<2 PSC has testified that the decision to lay off McTiernan.was 3
made on March the 8th, following a meeting with McTiernan 4
during which he refused, according to PSC's testimony, to make 5
any effort to improve his interpersonal skills.
6 h sste, however, that the issue that~"resulted in 7
that ametingtwith McTiernan was his-havias dreported to fils supervisor, on approximately February,theeasttr M 'i991, his a
9 concern about another technician having left wipes in the HP 10 office; and a note that McTiernan wrote to the other 11 technician at his supervisor's direction with regard to this 12 matter.
is While PSC has testified that the decision to lay 14 McTiernan off was made on March the 8th of 1991, neither 15 McTiernan nor the other potentially affected HP t'chnicians l
e 16 were told of that decision until March the 21st of 1991.
17 We note that McTiernan was told he was being laid off 18 some three days after HP management Mcame aware that 19 McTiernan had discussed with a Quality Assurance Inspector his 20 concerns about surveys not having been completed on the shift i
21 prior to his, and the affect this was having on his work.
ThQth -tM-M=4th a1991 deci'sibd'fb~ Titife96eenan of f
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22 23 an6Aha,deciolon to inform McTiernan of titis-emiMarch the 21st 24 of"6991 appeared to be directly connected' tir11tWitenevs 25 engagement.in protected activities.
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1 PSC has testified that other reasons led to the 2
decision Ao, lay'4fcTiernan off.
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they,9,pp,hsg reasons were present and available-te"PSC 3
managegen,t,p h ato March tNo 4th of-199 h when-PSC wee told 4
5 the HP stoff -- when PSC told the HP. staff who would.be 1 aid 6
off and who would remain througE August of 1991.
7 As Mr. Sanborn indicated in his remarks, the fact a
that an Enforcement Conference is being held does not mean 9
that the NRC has made a final determination that a violation j
i 10 has occurred.
W%havet provided-TtMrW$$N[IeEENe'h?Nffrir isst4g4,and, we' re, prepared.to lister as-yetr*provideP di'ivar 1 11 n
12 pgpgy,ct4yer We encourage you to present all information that 13 you consider relevant to our enforcement action.
14 At this point I will now turn the conference over to 15 Public Service Company of Colorado for your presentation.
16 Thank you.
17 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
Thank you.
Today we're going to 18 talk about four things:
I'm going to give you an introduction 19 and opening remarks which will be short.
Then Don Warenbourg 20 is going to talk about our destaffing philosophy and our 21 experience with regard to that philosophy.
And, finally, Ted 22 Borst will give you the basis for decision to release the l
23 complainant, and we believe that we will be answering 24 specifically the situation as you just described it for us.
25 And, finally, I'm going to give some concluding remarks.
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So that's basically the agenda we're going to follow today.
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42 As stated right in the beginning, in Public Service 3
Company's opinion, there was no violation of 10 CFR 50.7, in 4
Fort St. Vrain, and we hope that they can describe that for 5
you in enough detail today that you will concur.
6 Release of the complainant was part of the destaffing 7
required by the permaneric shutdown of Fort St. Vrain and the 8
inability to ship spent fuel to Idaho and was consistent with 9
the criteria set forth for destaffing Fort St. Vrain.
And 16 we'll' describe that criteria for you.
11 The complainant was not on the original list for u
release and was, in fact, placed on the release list after 13 management's evaluation of his ability to work with the HP 14 organization as a team member.
And we'll go through that in is some significant detail today.
16 Fort St. Vrain destaffing experience demonstrates 17 that discrimination did not and does not exist.
B&wyou take a 1,ook at,ourJ,9t.4143r9t"fdrce,' we'h @ ins from 850 down to 18 19 abggggp9.
20 PSC has maintained and advertised a policy of stop 21 work authority; and, in fact, I implemented stop-work 22 authority for every single employee dealing with nuclear 23 operations at Fort St. Vrain in 1989; and this stop work authority now has been implemented throughout the Public 24 2s Service Company of Colorado.
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PSC has always maintained an open policy with 2
reference to the NRC communications and employee contact with
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3 the Nuclear Reguletory Commission, and we have learned how to 4
deal more appropriately with contractor personnel problems; 5
and I'll discuss thct the later part of this presentation.
6 Any questions on this page here?
All right.
- Donald, 7
you're next.
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PSC DESTAFFING PHILOSOPHY AND EXPERIENCE 10 11 DONALD W. WAREMBOURG:
As Craig said, I'd like to set 12 the stage for what we were doing in terms of destaffing and 13 give you at least -- and try to familiarize yourself --
14 familiarize the group here with the conditions that we were is experiencing at that point in time, just sort of " set the 16 stage.
17 As you recall, in December of 1988 we had made the la decision to permanently chui down Fort St. Vrain.
That 19 decision was based on the fact that we were going to go ahead 20 and run out and burn up the existing core in, really, an 21 overburn-type situation, which would allow us to run Fort St.
22 Vrain utstil June 30th of 1990.
23 However, we never made it to June 30th, 1990.
In 24 fact, in August of 1989, we experienced some problems with our 25 steam generators and our control rods, and we decided to shut
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down at that point in time.
2 The fortunate part of our destaffing, though, was 3
that in December of 1988, recognizing where we needed to go.
4 We recognized that destaffing was going to be a significant 5
challenge for us.
As Craig indicated, we had to destaff 6
approximately 800 people from Fort St. Vrain, and we 7
recognized right up front that that was going to be a a
significant challenge for us.
9 Some of the issues there -- and not all of them.
But to some of the major issues was retention of appropriate 11 personnel to fulfill license conditions.
I'm sure you 12 recognize having a one and only HEGR in the country.
We could 13 not afford to lose some of our critical personnel, especially j
14 the licensed operators or those kinds of people.
15 Surely, we wanted to retain appropriate expertise for 16 defueling, and defueling loomed very heavily on us in terms of j
17 trying to get the defuel out of there before we could get la started on decommissioning.
We needed SSLO's and SRO's and 19 some critical engineering people in order to continue 20 defueling.
21 And then, last but not least, the retention of our 22 employees in the morale and productivity, recognized it as a 23 utility.
Public Service Company had never, ever in its 24 existence experienced any major destaffing.
When you hired on 25 with Public Service Company, you hired on to retire.
Short of
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committing moral turpitude, there wasn't too many 2
opportunities for you to get laid off from Public Service 3
Company being a utility so --
4 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
And that goes back to 1867.
So 5
Public Service Company is an old company and we've never had a 6
lay off.
7 DONALD W.
WAREMBOURG:
So we recognized the impact of a
that on our employees, and certainly in the process then we 9
had to develop some mechanism here to -- in order to keep our lo employee morale and productivity up.
11 So given that, we started right after December of 12 1988 to develop a Nuclear Operations Personnel Policy plan.,
13 That plan did not, although it impacted contractors, it 14 definitely did not include contractors in any incentive 15 program.
Segeggie44y,.4nWpM %panopedand,a r9t,9,nt,iongogan fog,pt fulpaitF e!Prvin 'CJdisa'Ify 16 17 p y s p,n n e l.
However, h.2ecognised tlutt4wedid' hear destaf f contrac grg a,s,p. 6 00 t h plam' 18 19 In that process we, management, developed a target 20 for that plan, and then we had several meetings with our 21 employees.
We obtained employee input, modified the plan, and 22 finally in February of 1989 we published that plan to the 23 employees.
24 Given that plan out there, however, we recognized 25 that we were going to be hit with all different kinds of
14 1
problems or different people out there with different
.2 problems.
There was a variety and a diverse set of issues
-~
3 that we were going to be hit with, depending on where the 4
various employees were in the process.
So in order to 5
maintain some consistency, our efforts were to develop a 6
destaffing philosophy that we would utilize to implement the 7
Nuclear Operations Plan.
s Our process was that everyone -- Clegg's direct 9
reports had to develop a destaffing plan in terms of coming to down, both contractors and FSC employees; and we would develop 11 our destaffing plan.
The ELT, which we called the Executive 12 Leadership Team, which consisted of Clegg and his direct l
13 reports, and we'd sit down once a week, and we'd go through 14 that process in terms of considering all of the destaffing
~
15 considerations that we had to go through.
16 Recognizing those, we wanted to get some consistency 17 in there.
These are some of the criteria that we set forth in 18 terms of destaffing Fort St. Vrain.
And these are not 19 necessarily in order of preference, but certainly they're all 20 considered equally in terms of the process that we went 21 through in actually putting people's names on the list for 22 destaffing.
23 We looked _at EEO and affirmative action goals.
24 Certainly, we were in a little different mode.
Before, we 25 were trying to maintain EEO and affirmative action by hiring
15 1
people.
Now, all of a sudden, we were in a destaffing mode.
2 And, again, we did not want to get in a situation where it 3
appeared to us -- or appeared to anyone from a destaffing 4
position -- that we were picking on a minority or the women's s
side of the force.
We had to maintain some equality as we 6
vent through the destaffing plan.
So that represented a 7
different, somewhat different, challenge to us than what we a
had in the past.
9 Certainly, 10 CFR 50 and the Technical Specification to Compliance, goes without saying, we had to maintain the staff 11 that we c wld meet our technical specification requirements.
g p cde;xether an*i M i% f.Y M N %ermei4f't8e 12 meQ4gtgaday.347;rMedeeM14W6Mylm before is 14 PSC personnel whenenper+possible.
And, certainly, that -- we is did retain some contractor personnel in this process, and 16 recognized, however, that those contract personnel were in 1
17 especially tight situations that weren't previously filled by 18 Public Service Company people.
For example, our security 19 force out there were all contract people, and they were 20 retained as contract just because they were not previous 21 positions held by Public Service Company.
22 So this one became significantly important to us in 23 terms of employee morale.
We certainly didn't want to be 24 laying off Public Service Company people and retaining l
25 contract people in positions that Public Service Company
- ;zz: -- T=-.
w a
m r
16 1
people could fill.
So that one became a very significant 2
consideration for us.
^
3 Functional needs to complete defueling and 4
decommissioning.
Again, looking at what we had to do, to 5
complete defueling r.nd looking forward to the decommissioning 6
activity.
That criteria went into to each and every name that 7
we put on our destaffing list, for both contractors and Public a
Service company employees.
9 Qualifications and experience go hand in hand with to the functional needs.
And, certainly, that process was 11 developed to get the best combination of people that we could 12 for both defueling and decommissioning.
13 The ability of individuals --
14 GARY SANBORN:
Excuse me.
Can I ask a question?
You 15 don't mind we interrupt you with questions?
16 DONALD W. WAREMBOURG:
No, not at all.
Any time.
17 GARY SANBORN:
I just wanted to ask a general is question.
That is, Were these considerations all documents 19 somewhere at the time?
2o DONALD W. WAREMBOURG:
These considerations were all 21 documented as a part of our Executive Leadership Team 22 considerations.
And so that when we met weekly and we went 23 over the lists of people who were added to the list or people 24 who we were going to give potential 90-day notices to which 2s were upcoming, these considerations were all weighed by each s
f_ _
17 1
direct report; and they were weighed jointly by the Executive
.2 Leadership team.
3 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
I believe it took us -- and I may 4
be exaggerating -- eight hours to come up with those criteria 5
because each of us were discussing them, arguing them, 6
philosophying, if you will, with respect to those criteria.
7 DONALD W. WAREMBOURG:
And these were generally known a
to the employees.
We didn't put out any specific memorandum, 9
but all these criteria, in terms of the direct reports and how to we added people to the names, were generally common knowledge 11 to the employees.
12 CHARLES H. FULLER:
Even though -- and it was 13 presented to the employees; not that there was an issue.
14 There was a meno that was issued, but it was in the
~
is presentation of the Nuclear Operations Personnel Policy.
16 Those criteria were presented to employees, at least in 17 Nuclear Production, in the area of interest here.
la A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
I believe I even presented them 19 in my all-employee meetings.
20 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
I will ask people to identify 21 themselves when they speak, although you may get to know us 22 after a while.
Go back to the basic question Gary asked.
Is 23 there any place where those considerations are documented at 24 PSC?
25 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
I believe the answer to that --
18 1
DONALD W. WAREMBOURG:
I believe they're
,2 documented -- if we went back to ELT minut.ss, I believe we 3
could dig those out, James, but I can't say right offhand with j
4 a great amount of certainty that I can put my hands on that 5
document right now.
i 6
A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
I believe the ELT minutes is 7
documented, and I believe we could find you some of the a
briefings that we gave so that they can review some of these.
9 So the answer to that is with fairly high certainty we can 10 show you the documentation.
11 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
Thank you.
1 12 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD: I won't bet $500 on it but I'm 1
13 fairly close.
14 DONALD W. WAREMBOURG:
JEstMateammusep A-, n Mnt is congMaratiopp.two. developed the process for.-thi case before 16 us,today, jy,)#a. ability-of individuals < to' work-t'Ogether as a 17 te p pAnd, again, this one recognizes -- was important to us.
18 Public Service Company was, at this point in time, in a 19 transition.
We were looking at a system called Service j
20 Excellence Toward Quality Management, Path to -- whatever it 21 is that you want to term that process, we were really looking i
22 at a participative management process and danaringA. transition 23 intmach h t:using a power to employ wor)L tocas as a.part of that 24 process.
25 And so, certainly, we, Nuclear Operations, in fact, j
i
x u.m e
19 1
were probably the leaders of Public Service Company in that 2
whole arena.
So recognize that in that process we were really 3
looking toward making that transition to team participation, 4
team involvement, and teams working together toward a common s
goal.
So, again, as we developed our doorummissioning 6
organization, that became a consideration for us as we looked 7
at the; team.
s Sen4crity -- again, we were governed by a labor 9
agreement and, certainly, for the bargaining unit personnel.
10 Seniority and the condit.ione associated with that union, 11 contract control.
Our situation -- in other words, we could 12 not be laying off senior bargaining unit people and retaining 13 contract people to fill their positions because we would be'in 14 direct violation of our labor agreement.
is Personal preference and hardship cases
'- and that 16 was sort of a last ditch situation, given the fact that all of 17 these turned out to be, in all conditions, above or equal.
Is And one person wanted to leave and one person wanted to stay.
19 And this person had some personal problems and they really 20 needed to get out of the organization and we could use that 21 person just as well as that one.
22 We tried to recognize and allow people with personal 23 preference to leave.
Again, our driver there was employee 24 morale, trying to keep that case up.
And at the same time, i
I 2s however, not allowing personal situations where people would j
l l
l 1
20 1
leave and really weren't warranted in that situation so that
,2 we would develop an adverse situation with reference to the 3
rest of the employees.
'Well, Joe left; why can't I leave?'
4 And so that kind of consideration is final with the process.
5 GARY SANBORN:
Gary Sanborn, Don.
Back to seniority.
6 was any consideration given to seniority outside the 7
bargaining unit?
Particularly to contract employees?
8 DONALD W. WAREMBOURG:
Not much in terms of contract 9
employees.
Now, in terms of Public Service Company employees, 10 seniority, as it related to qualifications, there's probably a 11 link that you could make there.
Although we had no big 12 driving force in terms of seniority outside of the bargaining 13 unit.
But, certainly, there was a link between qualifications 14 and experience, and we did have a tendency to hold on to our 15 more senior people than you would letting them go in terms of 16 getting an organization developed.
17 So those were the basic criteria that we went through 18 in terms of considerations by the Executive Leadership Team as 19 we went through our destaffing.
20 Experience.
Since August of 1989, Public Service 21 Company started out with 527 Public Service Company employees.
22 We are now destaffed to 98 without any formal destaffing 23 complaints in that period of time.
Swassvesens-elete to destaff 429' people in this process without any formal complaints.
Of 24 25 that total process, 253 of those people elected to take
.._uu2__.
1.:~ ar.a:. r a.2 =
_~
21 1
1 severance'in the Nuclear Operations; Policy Plan and were 2.
released from Public Service' Company on'that basis.
3 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
And of that 98, 30 of them have 4
been. assimilated-into other places in Public-Service Company.
5 They are still holdi.ng in retention program.
They still are.
6 going to be of the 98 of us, but we've given them a. job 7
someplace else until such time that we can see if we.can a
assimilate them into the company permanently.
Se,we,only have j
9 6& g @ <eletively out at the site.
10
> DONALD W. WAREMBOURG:
In this period of time we have 11 two processes at Fort St. Vrain for employees to raise formal 12 concerns.
One is the union process, where they can file union 13 grievances.
For the nonbergaining unit we have a problem 14 review process where employees can file a first, second, and is third step problem review.
During this period of' time we've is received no union grievances.
We've received no problem 17 reviews associated with the destaffing of that 429 people.
la on the contract side of that, we started out with 358 19 contractors in August of '89.
m354 1
l 20 con present.sta W Heffv96.69kgain, that's 21 334 contract personnel.
We destaffed with those contract 22 personnel without any formal complaints during that process.
23 A total reduction of 334 people.
+
24 So that brought us to 763 people that we destaffed.
l 25 I think that success record pretty much demonstrates that our 1
4
22 1
destaffing philosophy, our application of the Nuclear 2
Operations Plan, was administered fairly and consistently 3
without discrimination through this entire process.
4 In conclusion, from my end, certainly, we do not 5
believe that we are in violation of the provisions of 10 CFR 6
50.7.
Moreover -- and I've been at Fort St. Vrain since its 7
inception in 1965, and I'm not aware 06 any 90.7 complaints a
during our entire operation lifetimer.
And recognize that 9
during construction -- there's about an 8-year construction 10 period -- we had a full time RTD representative on-site, and 11 we're governed by the Denver le:L1 office with John Farr's 12 group out of the old URFO office.
It wasn't URFO at that 13 point in time.
So our people had access in terms of the NRC's 14 inspectors.
15 Following that into the operational phase, we had at 16 least one full-time resident inspector and, more than often, 17 two resident full-time inspectors on-site, where certainly our i
la employees had complete access, too, during that process.
- And, j
19 I think, if any of the inspectors said in any of our meetings, I think they would conclude that the Fort St. Vrain crew is 2o 21 not a bashful crew.
They were certainly willing to bring up any points at any time during employee meetings.
We had an 22 open management policy, and certainly they were in my office 23 24 on several occasions in terms of complaints.
2s In fact, just to give you some indication, we've got
=,
23 I
a corrective action process at Fort St. Vrain, and that
-s 2
consists of various mechanisms:
HP inspection reports.
There 3
are PDR, CAR, CN's, all those kinds of things.
And. just 4
quickly, I took a head count of some of those itete, and since 1
5 1966 we've processed over 30,000 corrective action instruments
\\
6 at Fort St. Vrain; and that does not include our station J
7 service reports in our plant, trouble reports, for add those a
in there that's probably another population of about 25,000.
9 So all total, certainly, we process some 55,000 corrective 10 action instruments at Fort St. Vrain, and I think that's a 11 conservative number in terms of our total.
12 A. CGG CRAWFORD:
Well, also during that period of 13 time I gave quarterly briefings to all Fort St. Vrain 14 personnel that was for all shifts, and during those briefings 15 they were completely open.
If you had ever had the privilege, 16 and some of your inspectors did, they will remember that they 17 literally ripped the wirigs -- my wings off at times as we had la open and frequent and candid discussion.
And they went on 19 sometimes for a long period of time.
20 DONALD W. WAREMBOURG:
Any questions on our 21 destaffing plan before we leave that?
With that, I'll turn it 22 over to Ted --
23 GARY SANBORN:
I did have a question.
You talked 24 about 30,000 corrective action instruments and 25,000 -- what?
2s Something else.
24 j
1 DONALD W. WAREMBOURG:
Station service requests and 2
plant trouble reports.
Those are primarily corrective actions 3
that our maintenance staff and our operating staff identifies 4
as problem areas within the plant; problem areas with s
procedures or controls of work processes, those kinds of 6
issues within the plant itself.
With that I'll turn it over 7
to Ted who will be discussing the specifics in terms of the a
details of the issue at hand.
9 10 BASIS FQR DECISION TO RELPJJ5LCOMPLAINANT 11 12 FREDERICK J. BORST:
My name is Ted Borst.
I'm 13 Radiation Protection Manager at Fort St. Vrain, and I sent 14 around another handout that has some information that I'll is also be talking about in addition to the overheads.
With the 16 exception of the cover page, it's nothing that hasn't been 17 sent out before; but I thought it'd be better to capture one la spot, rather than trying to go through all the paperwork that 19 we all have.
20 Now, today I want to talk a little about the 21 background that existed in the Health Physics Department in 22 late 1990 or early '91, somewhere around the period of time 23 when the complainant was released.
I think it's important for you to get a feeling of the environment and climate that 24 25 existed at that point in time.
O
25 1
Craig and Don have mentioned a little bit about why 2
we destaffed, and I'll speak a little bit more about that.
3 But more, really, how we destaffed and how we got to the March 4
4th release list, which was mentioned in your March 18th, s
1993, letter.
That was a list the complainant was not on.
6 Then I want to talk about events of early March 1991; 7
and actually, as I think about it, I'll need to go back into a
late February of 1991 to talk about the events that actually 9
ended up with the complainant being on the release list as of to March 8th, 1991.
11 Vd then I want to talk about some of the events that 12 led to the decision to release the complainant immediately on is March 22nd, as opposed to releasing on the three week's notice 14 which was our intent when we informed him of his release on is March 21st, 1991.
16 I want to talk a little bit about follow-up actions.
17 Again, we don't feel like we violated the provision of 50.7.
Is But we wanted to make sure that we weren't just believing our 19 own BS here, if you will, and that we were serious about doing 20 a good investigation and making sure we had things in hand.
21 And I'll finish with come discursion of the complaint 22 mechanisms that we have in place that are formal mechanisms 23 for people to bring up concerns to management and have those 24 addressed by the plant staff.
And, by and large, most of is these things were in place in.1991.
So there's nothing really
26 1
new there.
-2 W1. -
W-4g Public Service Coespany~in-Fort St.
Y^
\\
3 Vraivraist=ifusm.og,.1990, I-started my career as"8 Materiais 4
Inspehvittfthe~ NRC in Region III; And in 1990 -- osottem,
5 rather, Don promotsd. me to the position of Radiation 6
Protection Manager for Fort St. Vrain; and I held that 7
position until 1987 when I went to Training.
And I was proud a
of what my team was able to accomplish during that period of 9
time from 1981 to 1987.
10 During that period of time at FortaSt. Vrain the 11 radiation exposures and radioactive waste generation rates 12 were two orders of magnitude less than the industry averaged.
13 We had a very low incidence of contamination events.
The 14 plant -- since the plant's inception we have never found any is internally deposited radionuclides on any whole body counts at 16 Fort St. Vrain.
17 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the Institute of 18 Nuclear Power Operations or INPO gave our program the highest 19 possible marks on more than one occasion.
And I think by any 20 standard of measurement the program was judged to be a strong 21 program, and we had things well in hand for the operation of 22 the facility.
23 I mentioned I left in 1987.
I went to Training in 24 1990, late August, early September.
Clegg and Chuck requested that I return to the Radiation Protection Program; and it was 25
27 1
clear to me at that time that the program was not as strong as 2
it was when I left it in 1987, and I'll talk about some of 3
those indications that led me to that conclusion.
4 Don also mentioned that we were placing emphasis on 5
increased participative management at Fort St. Vrain and 6
Public Service Company in general.
And certainly I subscribe 7
to that; and on my first day back -- and in your handout, the 8
first page that you have, is a handout that was given to the 9
Radiation Protection staff on the first day I took the job, lo which was September 4th, 1990.
11 I sat down witn the Radiation Protection staff, the 12 Public Service Company, Health Physics technicians, the 13 contract technicians, the Health Physics professional and 14 management staff and the Radiochemistry folks; and I said, Ok, 15 folks, this is what I'm all about.
Because it was fair to 16 them to let them know what my priorities and beliefs were.
A 17 lot of people were new since 1987, and so I sat down and went is over this with them.
19 And the top part is just kind of some biographical 20 information, but when we get down to " key beliefs," this is 21 what I told them about where I stood.
I believed that we 22 needed to have constant respect for people; respect being, 23 treating people the way you want to be treated, with honesty, 24 forthrightness, uncompromising integrity.
We had to do things
~
25 right; we all knew that.
We were the safety net at Fort St.
i
28 Vrain and we had to do a good job.
1 s
2 Continuous improvement; and, again, given the status
^
3 of the department at that point in time, I knew that we needed 4
to start making incremental changes on the positive side, and l
5 we weren't going to turn things around overnight.
There were 6
Problems.
We acknowledged that, but we needed to start make I
7 Progress toward getting those problems behind us.
a Collaboration, shared responsibility.
Again, where I 9
get my strength is from my people.
I rely on them to give me lo information and to give me options, details, plans to choose 11 from, give all possible aspects of a decision before the 12 decision is made; and I count on the people to do that.
Ongoing development, again, is just -- I believe 13 14 people need to continue to improve themselves, make themselves 15 more marketable in the future.
So I went over these with the folks.
I also talked 16 about some key initiatives and, again, Don mentioned
]
17 18 participative management and employee involvement.
Add, too, service excellence, total quality management.
They have a lot 19 of names, but what I was interested in is improving 20 communications, heightening trust at all levels, and improving 21 22 relationships with internal and external customers.
And the customer piece is something I brought back with me from 23 24 training.
Now, when you're in training, you know who your 25 customers are.
They're sitting out there in the classroom;
29 1
you're delivering them a product.
They like it or they don't 2
like it.
3 Well, I think we lost track of the fact that we all 4
have customers.
The Radiablon Protection Program certainly s
had customers outside the department.
People who were looking 6
for radiation work permits or wanted a safe place to do 7
work were counting on us for that, but we had internal a
customers.
Everybody that worked together, the whole team, 9
were internal customers, and we had to start treating people to like customers.
11 All right.
So I sat down with them and I talked 12 about these things, some of the issues that I saw needing attention, and within 15 days of my taking this position we' 13 14 had an event which we refer to as a " Hot Service Facility is Event" on September 1990 -- resulted in five noti'ces of
]
16 violation.
We also got to como down here for an Enforcement 17 Conference.
13 Inamv e4ni,og,yp,pg ggw,l g v M A.,giviA + nalty; and the ramifications from that event were felt for a long 19 20 time afterwards.
There was distrust of the HP program from 21 outside of the program.
The workers weren't sure that HP 22 could be trusted to do the job.
Co%I&f*t*t!Mestk-as2 We're the safety people and,wg,were not trus*% of,-iftternel-ly, we 23 24 didn't trust. ourselves.. We didn't_kppw who to count on, who was doing a good job and who was doing..a,. bad,10).
25
1 30 l
1 When I looked around, I saw procedures were A
2 inconsistent.
In some cases they were not technically 3
correct; in some cases they didn't exist to cover some of the 4
new jobs that we were doing.
Remember, previously we were.
5 tsperating the facility and we had, plans and procedures in f
~
6 place to take care of that.
Now, we were'defueling -- at 7
least we were trying to defuel the reactor and get on toward s
decommissioning; and in a lot of cases our procedures were 9
just not adequate.
10 As-a result of that, the technicians had a feeling i
11 that they were kind of out on their own.
They didn't have l
12 consistent ways of doing business; they tended to improvise.
13 It resulted-dw a 1*Weenworkr da==mtinn af c1laues, a.s.
14 backbiting.
In govanhahed 1960 wo 4 pet <eletter fresalthe 15 bargain 4% wn driief,sfeVard d..
.. ~ -
nat indicated that there had 16 i
17 been sevegejn< acta.e@heressment"withiff'ttle*190enth Maysics 18 Departagst.maja& met *dparticutaf *tt,Chniclan, agg,. were Thdblh,~ Chuck -- $[ take action'to address 19 reque that situation,agd make sure that the technicians were not 20 gyscc --
21 being harassed.
22 GARY SANBORN:
What date was that?
23 FREDERICK J. BORST:
That was in November of 1990, 24 and you have a copy of that letter in the package that we sent i
25 out.
Now, the technician involved in this was convinced that
31 1
whosvcr w2e doing thio was reciding within tha d partnant.
7 Now, as you can imagine, that didn't tend to foster trust and 3
good team atmosphere within the department, and there cliques 1
4 and sides developed in all of that.
l s
As we want through this process, keep in mind -- as 6
we were talking about the shutting down the plant -- that the l
7 Public Service Company people were essentially working their a
way out of positions.
And unlike some of the people, like 9
maintenance mechanics, clerks, management, engineers, that had 10 a chance to catch on with Public Service Company, elsewhere in 11 the company we've had over a hundred of those people now that 12 have gone with the rest of the company.
~
13
'IterseeIWFtfysit1t*ETktbiYbffG 700 eftfR*99ee a home (or thempejyag%JJkf**turioni?"IId6T55"p ad5YtWTine.
We 14 readig <hanne, w ct iel' GalbadttWhat%EiMWat*Wbre is 16 shepherding.
Sedhese*fo19te'vero*1peetMW.:id@ going 17 pysy.
Is In fact, ssegnotothm.Aut&turgf4petylg4l9mpany y'j' bj;Zil_-ir#4dFislettrab4hWpedsk4e>< Mate, that 19 20 wam@ggERMWaitXTW8thMlic ServiWCetapanyofoWa career, had 21 gpngSINGF. There just ovasn'ba 91tnerfoir-1. hem.
Some of the 22 Public Service Company people who were left did not want to be 23 there.
They were anxious to get somewhere else, start a new 24 career, get going on benefits, move their families to new 25 locations.
32 i
1 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
One of the aspecte of our nted to leave the personneg ptAmt, 42 3
company, we.,
severance; and those were
(-
4 golden;lamadeuffr/- if you will.
5 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Public Service. Company 6
technicians obviously didn't want to give up those golden 7
handcuffs, but yet they wouldn't be able to leave unless all' s
the contract Health Physics technicians were gone,.because the 9
personnel policy plan and the union contraatt41ctated that to contractors-hed'to go away first.
So as long as we had 11 contractors on the site, the PSC people were not going to go 12 away.
They-were. stuck in a dead end dgb.
They really had 13 nowhere else to go in the company, and h jtheir' yees/AMhit, *teieir had to stay putY W1ipetMMhappy about
[
14 15 that.
16 In f act, when the NRC came out 30ItSuSMeety of 1990, 17 it performed an inspection -- Health Physics inspection.
The la inspectee saidT TeiC guys have a. big inorale prole &ambin Health 19 Physics.
Well, that's kind of unusual for an NRC inspector.
2o Now, he didn't find any safety issues, but what he did say is 21 you better keep a close eye on this group because there are 22 morale problems in that department.
23 Now, one of the most serious things that I noted was 24 a perception, on the part of the technicians, that management 25 was not doing a good job of their responsibilities of f
7 e T
T
~
~.... ~.. _~.
.'y 33-1 following up on issues that were raised -- issuesfin the sense
.1 2
of improvement items.
Now, we had a lot of people who had 3-experience at other plants.
Primarily, the contractors in I
4 this case had lots of good ideas on how to improve the
.s
. program..They've been other places where they were doing the l
6 kind of jobs that we were doing here.
Our people really 7
didn't have that experience, and they were bringing up issues a
about the way things were being done and suggestions on how to 9
do them better -- improvement items.
to Now, we had -- and most people do -- a system where 11 things come up and management addresses them.
It's kind of an 12 informal system.
When somebody says, Hey, why don't we try this, and this either gets done or doesn't get done -- a ve'ry is
' nformal system.
And their procedure -- their perception, i
14 rather -- is that those things were getting lost;"those things is 16 would come to management and they'd disappear.
Nobody would I
17 know where they went -- into some big,: black hole somewhere -- and their ideas were not getting acted on.
As a is 19 result, they were very frustrated; you can understand that.
L They had ideas that they thought were good ones and management l
20 21 didn't seem to be listening.
Nttrpv$i9erall these things, t.his was. not a fun place 22 23 to, york.
Technicians were not happy with the way things were 24 going:
dissention, lack of teamwork inside the department, distrust from outside the department.
And I knew that some 25 a
f 4
-ve
-a e-a n
6
34 1
changes had to be made here.
We couldn't let things go the 2
way they were.
3 I stole these words from Clegg:
"a bias for action."
4 One of the things I've learned from him is:
Sometimes you l
l 5
just have to do things, as much as you may not want to on j
l 6
occasion.
But there are a couple of things that I 7
implemented; and if you go back to your handout, now, on the 8
second page -- the second handout that I gave you behind the 9
September page -- is something called an "Information/ Night to Log," dated February 6th, 1091.
Now, what's remarkable here 11 is not this page, because this Information/ Night Log has been 12 built for as long as I've been there, which is 1980.
It's'the is way we communicate information for people on rotating shifts, 14 which is what the Health Physics group is on.
Pretty tough to is get information for people working the midnight shift.
16 So that's not what I want to call your attention to.
17 But attached to this a No. 3 indicates attached is a list of 18 issues.
I fRTWufwge:ducebte~ th9seMst,wyeef h r aes,.ehnt thi s ha s
'If.h, 1991.
This was my effort to
~
19 20 start formalizing the way that issues were raised within the 21 department and addressed; issues about the way we were doing 22 business and suggestions for improvement.
23 Now, as you go through here, you'll find out that the 24 numbering system has some serious problems.
And rather than 25 trying to correct that, since this is the original of this
35 1
page, I left it the way~it is.
It doesn't change the point v
I
,2 that I'm going to.make with this.
. _.z 3
For example, let's take No. 1 on the list, "RWP Job l
4 Briefings."
Somebody in the department had identified a need 5
to establish criteria to determine when a radiological job 6
briefing is required, what information needs to be discussed, 7
and what documentation is required.
It seems like-pretty a
basic stuff.
But at that point in time, we were pretty 9
primitive in our program, and these were the things that we 10 didn't have.
So someone raised an issue, Hey we don't have 11 these things; we need to get them.
So we put it on the issues 12 list.
You can see there's an assignment there.
13 Typically, these got assigned to the Health Physics 14 technicians.
I guess in most cases they were assigned-to the 15 people that brought the issue up.
Because, typically, the way
.I 16 these things would come up is somebody would say, You know, I 17 don't think we're doing a real great job of doing RWP job 18 briefings.
I've been at some plants that really did a 19 bang-up job and I can fix that.
And we'd say, Great, have a 20 ball.
21 Part of my key beliefs and incentives:
get people 22 involved, shared responsibility for results, collaboration --
23 love this kind of stuff.
And we kept status of these.
This 24 list was listed periodically.
It was our attempt, again, to 25 show people that we were serious about taking care of issu'es
36 1
as they got raised.
2 Now, a couple of specific ones that I want to draw 3
your attention to.
On the second page of this list is a No.
4 8.
Again, I don't know what happened to No. 7, but that's --
5 we won't worry about that for nou.
No. 8 talks about exposure 6
tracking.
A need was identified to keep the workers and/or HP 7
technicians informed of current daily, weekly, quarterly and a
annual exposure.
And you can see this was coassigned to the 9
Complainant for action.
10
-Now, if you go two more pages in, you have a page 11 that has a No. 12 and a No. 14; and, again, I don't want to 12 dwell on that.
But No. 12 indicates that radioactive materials was being allowed in the same areas that eating, 13 14 drinking, and smoking were allowedt that is, the Health is Physics office.
Now, this was common practice at'this time to bring things like wipes, contaminated material sources into 16 17 the area.
18 Recently the Health Physics staff had moved and before moving the counting instrumentation was right next to the 19 workstation, so it was real convenient to bring things over to 20 your desk while you were counting them or preparing to count 21 22 them.
The Health Physics office moved and incorporated a lunchroom in their office area.
Previously, their lunchroom 23 had been somewhere different, so this came up as a new issue:
24 Now, we're in a new office; we eat here.
Is it still okay to 25
l 37 1
bring stuff into the office?
Radioactive materials, 2
potentially.
3 So someone brought that up as a concern.
I honestly 4
couldn't tell you who it was.
This particular one was 5
assigned to a Health Physics supervisor because it was a 6
policy question.
And you can see that as of February 6th 7
management recognized that " good HP practice requires 8
radioactive materials which could cause a spread of 9
contamination not be brought into eating areas.
This applies l
to to wipes, contaminated materials, etc."
11 And there was an open question about radioactive 12 sources that probably wouldn't result in contamin'ation in the is office.
So as of February 6th this particular item had been 14 raised by the staff, and management had taken a position on i
is it.
16 okay c tn#tP5%Nt6'thinf?'Mr'fesuesalist.. Now, in 17 additiogrWhtPfuistarted somethingisalled.the :" issue du 18 jour," if you will, issue of the day; and StAlpetalBined that with 41 ready doing whiOh818'e'tBrnover Meeting.
19 so 20 Now, every morning what happened was the midnight night shift 21 technician -- well, you know what a turnover meeting is:
a 22 person from one shift turns over the shift to the next 23 shift -- person on the next shift.
Well, what we were doing 24 in the morning was the midnight shift person would turn it 25 over to the day shift person and away we'd go.
38 1
And we decided to improve on that idea.
And at the
-~
.2 morning turnover meeting we got all the Health Physics 3
technicians together because we all -- we want them all to 4
know where it happened on the midnight shift and what the 5
plans for the day were, if there were any concerns, issues, 6
things that had come up overnight.
7 Now, I attached to that, again, the issue of the day, e
and the theory here was that anybody in the room could raise 9
an issue, concern, question about the way we were doing to business.
And my job -- and I attended all these meetings.
11 My job as a manager was to field the issue, carry a brief 12 discussion because this meeting needed to be short so we could get started on our work, and, ideally, come to a conclusion" is 14 and a position'on that issue.
15 And if we couldn't fix it or cap it or come to a 16 position that day, we'd have en answer for the Health Physics 17 technicians within 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br />.
And, again, another way of 18 demonstrating that, hey, I know there's issues out there.
We 19 never claimed that there weren't problems and concerns on the 20 part of the staff, but what was missing was this management 21 piece that says, hey, management's going to do something when 22 we raise these things.
23 It was not acceptable to the staff if they were 24 raising issues and no one dealt with them.
So this was one n
way to do it with the issue of the day.
Another one was the
39 1
HP issues list.
Another one was basically an open-door 2
Policy; as I brought my management style, participative 3
management into the group.
As Clegg and Don mentioned, I
.didn't have a staff of wal'Iflowers.
Boy, they were certainly 4
5 willing to bring any questions or concerns they had in'there.
6 okay, so that kind of gives you an idea of the 7
background.
I had concerns with the program, the HP program; a
it was not as strong as I wanted it to be.
Sewesel events 9
taking.-place in-heret recognition: free.mateide.the department to within PS,3,and.bysthe NRr' t%t wenth mew 4Wproble&s( that
, p.
so=aghga ; M 'fA be taken care of.
11 12 The stadd-seemed to be kindiminebeceing's h,
13 if you will.
We h.aal 14 agassastr' tfief'nIsfah.
The feeling was that was happening 15 internally.
We'aNebeHbff"ktilYT6*dbihtmettetebekactly the 16 sOWMON, N SN M'dbIion N h Y N k T @ er to try and 64WTyhti' vill.
1 17 18 What I want to do next is talk a little bit about 19 destaffing and how we got to the March 4th release list.
20 Clegg and Don have mentioned the fact that we needed to be 21 destaffed because of uncertainty that existed in our ability 22 to ship fuel.
Again, as background information, I believe it-j 23 was October of 1990, we were able to make three shipments of 24 spent fuel to the INEL in Idaho out of 247 that we needed to 25 make.
So we made three shipments, at which time the Shoshone
40 1
Bannock Indian nation in Idaho had put some restrictions on 2
our ability to transfer spent fuel across their reservation.
3 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
One of the factors for us that 4
made it so difficult -- let's take April 1st, 1990, as an s
example.
In early February I got a call from the 6
undersecretary of energy -- Department of Energy -- Bill Young 7
that said, If you will give us some money so we can finish a
some of things we want to do at INEL, we'll guarantee we can 9
ship on April ist.
I called him back and offered him $15 to million, and he guaranteed us that we'd be able to ship on 11 April 1st 12 So, of course, part of our process, I told the 13 employees we'd be able to ship on April lat.
Well, that 14 turned out to be absolutely incorrect and we didn't ship.
So, is consequently, we were constantly having our people feel that 16 management wasn't keeping their word, frankly.
17 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
We thought we had the problems 18 worked out with the tribe in working with the NRC 19 Transportation branch.
We arranged for some things like 20 alternate routes that would get us to the INEL outside the 21 reservation.
And in late 1990, early 1991 we were getting 22 excited again, and we thought for sure this time we were going 23 to go.
We had, in fact, started a pool at the plant where 24 everybody was going to throw money into the kitty and whoever
{
25 ended up with it the day when we were finished got a big pot
r, 41 1
of money.
,2 Well, that kind of went down the tubes, too, because 1
3 in late February, Governor Anders in Idaho took some legal i
. action to prevent us from shipping; and, I guess, that was in 4
5 January.
In early February we filed suit against-Governor 6
Anders.
Okay, now it looked like we were not going to ship, 7
and as a result of that Clegg asked the division managers --
8 Chuck was Division Nanager for production at that time -- to 9
put together a destaffing plan.
10
-And if you now go back to your last page of this 11 auxiliary handout, what you'll find is a copy of my destaffing 12 plan as of February 2nd -- 22nd, 1991.
Now, you'll notice at is that point in time I was in a particularly important position.
14 Not only did I have Radiation Protection, I was also responsible for Training, Emergency Planning, and' Nuclear is 16 Documents.
So for each one of taase departments, I put i
17 together a destaffing plan.
Is httRIEMit3H9WWMimpyget4&.getice the 19 na g
', E who was 20 go W P6Detta1*y 22N1.
I had, along with my 21 Health Physics Supervisor, come to the conclusion that if we 22 were not going to ship spent fuel, I would able to release 23 four contract Health Physics technicians.
Again, keep in mind 24 no PSC technicians would be a part of this because we had 25 contractors for the plan, and the bargaining unit agreement d
42 1
would need to go away first.
.2 So my assessment'was if we were not going to ship
~
3 fuel, I could release four contract Health Physics technicians l
4 in the April time frame; again, this was February 22nd.
s Over on the right-hand side are some comments, and we I
6 went through a number of scenarios:
What if we shipped spent f
7 fuel?
What if we don't ship spent fuel?
What if build an e
on-site independent spent fuel storage. installation and 9
started defueling to that as of about December 1st of 1991?
j l
10 Lots of different scenarios, lots of different cases.
Base 11 case was not shipping spent fuel to Idaho, and my destaffing 12 plan called for a reduction of four contract HP technicians.
13 And as of PatnMaery -aethe:1pesgetethe' seed *trega clogg j
14 to go,.
.Me. maWe eisaye let*s 4=prhanem*-WmWERif5ttuy plan.
is A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
Another piece of information for 16 you:
All at the same period of time on February 2nd, 1991, is 17 when the NRC approved our EA to initiate the construction of 18 RSC.
So on February 22nd we actually started construction of 19 our independent spent fuel storage installation.
That's all 2o happening in the same period of time.
21 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Okay.
Now the hard work 22 started.
Now I had to_ figure out who was going to be 23 released, and I had to start reviewing the contract staff to 24 determine -- first of all, I had to look at what criteria I 25 was going to use for release.
Second of all, I would have to
43 1
decide who would go given those criteria.
2 Don mentioned the operation's policy plan was only 3
applicable to Public Service Company, so in answer to the 4
previous question, seniority was not in issue with the 5
contract staff.
6 What was in issue was qualifications.
- And, 7
basically, we had a couple of different layers of a
qualifications, one of which fo" the newer people.
They came 9
in; they were not able to watch a shift independently.
They 10 had to have another qualified person with them on any shift 11 that they carried.
12 The final status of qualification:
shift is qualification.
In that case, they could carry a shift by 14 themselves -- oaviously were more valuable to me in that case.
15 So one of my criteria certainly was qualification's and another 16 criteria was technical ability and skills.
Again, our program 17 was not strong tech 71cally; we needed to improve that.
So 18 technical skills 'ertainly were part of that.
gg MBE M50$6frtN [ ir$5'I Ns5"M 6 M "141111s,s the 19 2o abi og t r as a member f the team.
It was on 21 the operation's plan criteria, just as important within 22 Radiation and Protection.
Even if SGid L Y Wed te6hnically i
qualified, c'oilld t.liey work together?
I mentioned the fact 23 24 we'd had cliques, lack of teamwork, backbiting, incidents of 25 harassment -- totally unacceptable.
It was not acceptable to
i i
44 1
have members of my staff harassed.
And so whoever I kept was
.2 going to be a team player, no doubt about it.
One of my most 3
important criteria -- had to work together with the rest of 4
the staff.
5 Okay.
During this period Fif8FitBINobserve a 6
congle of different. individuals,"ene of..which-.was a less 7
senior contractog.Who.was not shift quali.fted,e4 4his time.
8 And the reason that he got my.attentien.wan-Wa.had.a;1_. event.at 9
the plant _i2L.abQut.mid-February where we had a contamination 10 event.
The NRC was extrer.ely interested in it.
This
- ~ ~ ~ ~. _.... _,,
11 individual parM to.that event; =nel him resR9nser both
- =.;. ;
12 from a technical yigwpoint.and.an. % rsonal viewpoint,swas
.m..,_.--
-._- ~...%
13 outstanding.
He did a great job responding to the event and 14 following up to what happened there, and I wasn't the only one
~
is that noticed this.
16 Mr.d A.Lii-6','**@TM*1P8F im "EenEIHP r'8sDEit
~
17 inspectgE,p_t,t ghma, =_mif4eeM7 _..L16.000.; prformance of.thig_jpdivirh= 7^ iikf4*TE*on'eTd'iaWii.5F' Now, you don't 18 19 see that very often.
We don't see "at-a-boys" very often, but j
l 20 to get a specific individual named by the resident inspector, 21 I mean, this is a feather in the guy's cap.
He did a great 22 job and, as a result, he got my attention.
A M "f"B&'fd, Hey, this du_y..s. - ~.n.looks pretty good.
23 24 Now, time-comp &einant wasasttMP 7'ina.my,4ttention s
25 during this period-of time.
Unfortunately, it was kind of in i
45.
1 an increasingly negative way.
Let me talk to you.about that.
.2-I mentioned on the list of assignments -- action ites 3
- lists -- the complainant had been assigned an action item on I
4 exposure tracking.
Wel.1,.the complainant,yps,39t y al. happy s
about being assigned that item to begin with.
He felt it was 6
not his job.as a Health Physics technician to provide input to 7
manage,mep,t,,opoyJ;pf-v,.
'thd ' program.
- a CHARLES FULLER:
Excuse me.
Ted, could you point out.
9 on that assignments list again where that is?
10 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Thank you, Chuck.
IU s on*the' 11 second page of gMat.,and itfs-4fetM -v. ~ a on" N it e ys
~
n..
~~
l, -- _m,
i 12 "Ev r g,g, gar?ina-5 -Wee-cen"#84 Fit M no.
o, 13 Tracking," was coassipettf.ph W-4===t==4 anath.e. r w_
14 Health Physi,qb t e =1=len.
As I mentioned earlier, the is complainant was not happy about being assigned th'is iten; did 16 not seem to think that it was part of his responsibility as an 17 HP tech to provide input to Health Physics management in terms is of improving this situation or contributing.to a solution
. l 19 here; didn't seem to really buy into the concept of shared j
i 20 responsibility, I guess, if you will, for making things 21 better.
22 And I mentioned"this list' WitP pH99fthed aw February f
6th,;but these* items hed been out there.(pr,a,. g g This was 23 24 the first. time we put them together in a-11stessowtsbese things 25 had been assigned prior to February 6th, probeMy'in late i
w
~,w w
..,__e,.-
--+-~-+n-n
i 46 1
January.
There's some references in htre to the status as of f
2 January 31st.
Sometime in January we probably started putting l
3 these together, and there really hadn't been any action of i
4 this particular item.
So I was starting to get a little bit s
concerned about the individual's follow-up on a particular 6
assignment.
7 GARY SANBORN:
Was it customary to give assignments a
of this nature to contract HP techs?
9 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Yes, it was, Gary.
And the 10 reason is because a lot of the contractors had real good 11 experience elsewhere in the industry.
As I mentioned earlier, Et our Public Service Company technicians didn't really have that experience or had been at Fort St. Vrain for a long time an'd 13 14 were maybe a little out of touch with current industry u
practices.
So the contractors were really in a much better 16 position to say, Hey, I just came from a plant that's got a 17 good exposure tracking program, for example, and I can get a is copy of that from my contact at another plant.
19 So yeah.
In fact, you know, they were pretty 20 enthusiastic about this process.
They like the fact that they 21 were being asked to contribute to the solution and were able zt to give us some help.
13 GARY SANBORN; Was the other individual assigned this 24 responsibility a contract tech or a PSC tech?
15 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
They were both contract techs.
47 1
L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
Did you consider McTiernan the 2
lead tech for this assignment and not Ulrich?
3 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Yeah, I would guess in this case 4
that he was probably the lead, since his name shows up there 5
first.
6 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
Did you develop similar negative 7
feelings about the other individual, Ulrich?
8 FREDERICK J. BORST:
No, not necessarily, and for 9
reasons that I'll talk about later.
He -- for example, he did to not --he-was not as vocal when he was given the assignment in 11 that he didn't think it was part of his responsibility.
He n
seemed to be more interested in participating in the project is and coming up with some results.
14 JAMES L. VTLHOAN:
Was there -- on this No. 8 where 15 McTiernan was asdA,
,d action.
Was there a due date assigned j
16 to that particular action?
17 FREDERICK J. BORST:
No.
Again, we were kind of 18 taking the position that we wanted some results, but in all 19 cases we weren't smart enough to know how long it was going to 2o take to fix some of these things.
So a lot of cases, 21 especially early on in the program, we were a little loose, I 22 guess, with the due dates.
We were kind of letting people 23 work at their pace, recognizing that they were on shift and it 24 wasn't possible in a lot of cases to establish real strict 25 deadlines.
But we did expect to see progress.
48 1
Now, through this period, also, the complainant was 2
becoming increasingly vocal about issues that were not his.
3 And what do I mean about that?
Certainly not safety issues 4
because those were -.that was his responsibility.
5 The issues that I'm talking about are issues like 6
complainant -- when we started bringing new technicians in on i
7 thM4Edjia?t' bf'49907t?W 86iiipl11riahMW ups4P4-W,-
J actualif'#J Y...o-am. e n.
. %,.,Ife.D.e m ~th Physics technicians at the new contract
.. e,,.
e 9
comigg,iaApees'makimef' tage eeWaMWM*the: 43,was.
Hend&dm89"Tffe,sathat.
And the newer contract Health Physics 10 11 techntatens(4Htf6MMM8 ' fnWt*haTYF5ftfMNard.
12 was-woey. M dt9ht *1f'ahdmed@tAsent See4Ag.
He was 13 concerned about they were making the same amount of money h'e 14 was making.
He-did not think that that should be the case.
He,gggg"ng' p%6te6teshistoians were 15 getting a$. ;
& =^ M M _Q
the overtime and he was not.
,,.g, 16 17 Well, th t m it m ei, g. h, h tract.
Is coir _ _ t
___ J C C Z " W 1 guess, as they show up in 19 various plants.-
He was concerned about that.
He was 20 concerned --
21 CHARLES H. FULLER:
Let me make an additional comment 22 on that.
He was so concerned that I had -- we had a 23 communications efforts going on here, and I had many, many all 24 employee staf f meetings; but op. ens-M941ers.,st. egg meeting 2s weeware eu1RfMtf4tMit' continued employeW'aWo"wbit' activities G
e r --
--r
49 1
and, in reality, the unfairness in the world for some of the
.2 employees.
Apd, g e McTiernan, who I did not know at that 3
4
- point in time, stood up in that staff meeting that I was
.wy.mm..wr 5
having, was complaining loudly and voceriferously about his 6
pay yersus other people's pay, the amount of overtime he was 7
g9tting vypus.y!Mt,,ySC people overtime _ w44, and the fact that
%n.
that waQfafg,,even..though it was resguired by the union e
contraf)
And,.ip general, was very, disgust,Lve at the staff 9
10 meetday.-
11 Now, I have an open-door policy, had an open-door-12 policy at the time, but I found that to be ---certainly not productive and, actually, quite surprising that a contract"HP 13 14 tech would publicly challenge not only me, but the rest of the is management organization about our work practices and about our 16 union contract.
And I had to chine in there and say that.
17 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
Af'PT, _ _11--
poteer tenere is we 18 donet 6%tes, and so fear him -to* talk about 19 t
Abe ishould have gone back to"his management uaw 20 and ta a
ut it and complain there.
We don't take and go 21 through and say, This contractor gets this amount of money and 22 this contractor gets this amount of money and so on down the 23 line.
WipeentreetN W an organization.
24 ED HAWKINS:
You may have answered part of my 25 question, Clegg, but it is that you were getting these
--w-------
y
-, - ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
50 1
complaints.
Was he getting any response from Public Service
.2 Company? AlphAggmrespop41pg,.teh'umlahh 3
CHARLES FULLER:
In relation to the question that he 4
raised at my staff meeting, yes, he did get the response.
My 5
response at the staff meeting was, since I didn't have an 6
answer, was, We'll check that out and I'll have somebody get 7
back to you.
I did that remembering that I did not know who 8
that person was.
I knew he was not a PSC employee, but I 9
didn't know what his work activity was, how long he'd been 10 there, etc., etc.
11 So I went and talked to Bill Woodard at that time, 12 shortly after that staff meeting -- I mean, within hours of 13 that staff meeting -- and said, Tell me what this complaintf 14 is.
I don't really fully understand what it is, but I know 15 it's not a PSC employee, and I'm assuming that it'has to be a 16 contract employee, so what is that person complaining about?
17 I mean, we've got a union contract that we have to live with.
l 18 And so Bill came back to me several days later after 19 he had talked to Mr. McTiernan and said, Well, I've got that 20 resolved; explained to him about what the contract was, what 21 our pay scale is, what it is we've got to live by.
As I 22 recall, I asked Bill's impression, Bill Woodard's impression 23 of that, and kind of didn't know whether to feel comfortable 24 or not, because it didn't seem to him like the issue was 25 really resolved; the explanation had been provided.
But in
51 1
subsequent discussions concerning Mr. McTiernan, T ccan 2
understand why Bill wouldn't have that comfort level that it 3
had been, quote, resolved.
1 4
FREDERICK J. BORST:
Another concern was George felt 5
like he should bo ort the same shift schedule as the Public 6
Service company technicians and that +.te more junior contract 7
Health Physics technicians should be on a less desirable a
schedule than he and the Public Service Technicians were on.
9 In this case he managed to alienate both of those groups:
the 10 ARC people, obviously, again, because he was somehow different 11 than they were, the more junior people didn't feel them -,
make them feel good about who they were; the PSC" people, 12 obviously, because they had to negotiate through the union '
13 14 process for the schedules that they had and their benefits.
And this guy was saying, IIey, I want what you hav'e without 15 16 negotiating for it, basically; and we're not wild about that.
17 Chuck talked about his observations.
Now, okay, put 1991.
la this all together.
W 19 W
s.. the 4 fi5%74'#E91EMhikAppe our 1
20 21 per AsinaattdagKk'.9suttleBMpett*.6Ja, vas I
22 shift g g g g g g, $.3 rain; and V
23 we,tupaclg$,
%'We*MMI In sp6!doetWM W1Ndividua1's j
24 attitud,eggh ylmuW6fdF..... _...%qwwetggetR?eo'vtr-f things that seemed to contribute to 25
~
52 a 1apsd.wW49 the'ertysm11rtit6 put 1
,2 toge A 4 mm1.he,.wps y g p g e, list.
3 GARY SANBORN:
Ard W EV18WtiteP56,*Mab all.cf 4
't h ehout the complainant were+di h in
{
s arriving et the Merch 4th list?
6 FREDERICK J. BOBSE:...They_ Mage, g ginM,jis.cyssed 7
betw n th- "--m 19tystetWrviserrh, and mys%1f-tieferWe~c~a~me Eo^tsEdnT1TsTon uhm._'l be on the a
9 lisf." All right.
10 Now, I want to go back to your letter on March 18th, 11 1993, and part of that letter that you've got in front of you.
12 It's on page 2, the first full paragraph, and it looks to me 13 like it's about eight sentences down and the line starts wi'th 14 the words " compliance with procedures."
And the letter goes is on to say 0.I.'s conclusion was based, in part, on the fact 16 that PSC apparently reversed on March 14th -- March 4th, f
17 rather -- 1991, decision to retain this individual and Is included this individual in an upcoming layoff of ccntract i
19 Radiation Protection technicians shortly after this individual raised concerns about PSC technicians failing to comply with j
20 21 an internal PSC procedure regarding the storage of potentially 22 contaminated wipe samples.
23 The letter implies that the March 4th list was 24 developed, the complainant brought concerns to Public Service 25 Company, and the complainant was put on the release list.
And
a n
53 1
that's not, in fact, what happened.
That chronology'is not 2
accurate.
3 GARY SANBORN:
Ted, let me try to explain what you 4
should infer from that.
That's not meant to imply that that 5
was, in fact, the chronology.
It is meant to imply that the 6
issue that 4e raised'regai91ng the wipes having been left in 7
the HP office cibtbrWEMA32gtyhmeth, which was a
some two days prior to the decision to terminate the 9
employment of the complainant.
We recognized that he first 10 raised the issue, first complained about the wipes having been 11 left there sometime in February of '91.
That issue came to a 12 head, we feel, very close to the time the decision was made to 13 release him.
14 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Okay.
Thanks for clarifying 15 that.
16 GARY SANBORN:
Sure.
And I think that's reflected in 17 the remarks that Mr. Milhoan made today and may have described is the events more clearly than the letter did.
19 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Okay.
Thank you.
Mr. Milhoan 20 also made reference to a note --
21 CHARLES FULLER:
Ted?
Although the activities list 22 do ghow that on -- as of February 6th the Health Physics 23 supervisor did agree and put out the information that bringing l
24 wipes into the HP office was then a compliance.
So that had
{
25 been -- at least that piece of it had been resolved as of
l 54 1
February 6th.
.2 GARY SANBORN:
That was in the night log, I believe,
^
3 correct?
4 CHARLES FULLER:
It was in the action list.
5 FREDERICK J. BORST:
It was attached to the night 6
log.
,1 7
6 CHARLES FULLER:
Which was attached to the night log.
f
{ *ty ' w reempathy hih"efet' support' fttna675
---;:M=ar and t.
a.:.47 addletsa4FMFWY[16fuAEy ' 6 thi.
9 10
-A.
CLEGG CRAWFORD:
That was No. 12, the last page of 11 that action.
12 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Now, mention was nade earlier 13 today about a concern that was raised on or about February
- 14 loth in that corresponding note, and I'm not familiar with 15 that date.
B 6 dmw Im..tha g M$.41. the 16 comp 1miyg_-ef-*::r,'es&sedwrec;; ' :: rg';_:.;ia1ly 17 radiogghitMiedI9hEAE81EE'8iW'93hWE3P84EEC^i ~ ' -d#
"""4. I think
- m sa,
j 18 the44s444teMfR11RIF event.
19 On h,4- ?"
arAQ4gmar}agement.
Complainant had a concern about the storage of potentially 20 21 contaminated wipes in the Health Physics office.
22 GARY SANBORN:
Yeah.
In fact, that's the way we 23 understood it, based on all the information you provided us 24 and all the information our office and investigations 25 gathered.
Thee*fils*cI5mhliintonFe8tud2'ye26thwastheone
~....
i 55
. hich also. involved the note to the other technician and which i
w 1
42
.oulminated.in'the meetings in early March.
3 CHARLES' FULLER:
Yes.
4 GARY SANBORN:
All right.
So h @ tLabout --
s complaint on February 26r.n, then, occurred after managemeist i
6 made it clear that.the. practice was,not. acceptable, the 7
Practica..of laeving vipes in the area.
s L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
I never. thought that the complainant was trying to convince you that was a bad practice to to have swipes.
I think the,issus,. pagan.wh&eh"ve*d agree, that 11 the PSC tegJp4p&en that;left them in-t9m' dretrer,' that-they had questignabla,p, quoetionaMW'capabifit7;' an(t.his 'was 8
12 13 another4mam&destetten of ther lacRBf'6ditTTdGAch or reliabJlity,ag,aJpggghicieny and'N#W151D*4esue that he 14
,. m. e was bringI,ng forward.
is 16 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Cer 6 ainaht had
, p:
,.-a-
.m m..
17 thap M-Y Y [.,..otiher technician; that's correct.
Is L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
Right.
So he wasn't bringing it forward -- since I have these -- h Jees, @ passing the issue 19
- (6
'piou 'it was 'a bed ~peecticeu sue: was raising 20 Wedetsyntheonvince you that t.hs PSC technician was 21 22 not competent, and this was another example of that.
Was that 23 the way that you --
24 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Well, I don't really know as I 25 can speak to the individual's motives.
I take it from a more
,w-
--+-
w
56
'I altruistic standpoint and say, Listen,,,ypW.knog,g=? p tive 1
ag2M11y radioactiveF<mateetelepor It<ehouldn't
{
,2 1
3 be.
atWre~hverybody's eating lunch, and so let's get 4
them out of there.- Let me talk some more --
5 GARY SANBORN:
Let me just add to that because I I
6 don't want to leave this point unclear.
It's our perspective 7
that by the time the complainant raises this issue'again on s
February 26th or, perhaps, for the first time for all we know, 9
that he's referring to the fact; that ggesent, has already 10 esteMikhbd'tfit#8"We"t' poMoyWhasWAan of e....
2 t.
11 that. pent,F mus, he raises the concern.
12 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
I th 13 tegenhwi di Maretr 4W8m,Iaueam m,mmu,ma,,nr_:mo s x days later, he was not on tne u T.- So we
~
14 diA 4ti,,,pubMas genthesGGW@*NEd 86hM-en. the l
15 16 2de$.
17 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Yeah, it's clear that -- and is I'll go back and my next slide talks about the events of early 19 March 1991.
As I mentioned before, I'm going to need to go 20 back in February and this is why, and we'll start with that I
21 process and go through that.
22 Now, complainant raised the issue and -- it will be a 23 while before I get to this slide, so be patient.
h ary i
l n,~~...
24tetthe3Niskainant raises an issueSaIErdt tWEtoringe of
[
~
24 25 po'teestiaHyecontaminated' material in the Heal Physics I
57 1
office.
But In need to tell-yew-itewhvep.
,2 The @&ihaftt* took+1tu-,:
1" le U W through 3
the'*eeterinter'6ff top of the other Noelt9FMrystes=Deshnician's 4
desk,.
It mq,ggb si situation where.f,be. survey 4 or. the wipes 5
were sitting ow top of a desk where,somehedy,could see then 6
and walk by aed mayf H e y, T R f M h h M c _:; ;- r d t o 7
h&ve'thatEn"there.
I better gitt*tirof-them.
The,esipen.and.
.s.a tr s
the' dth%f'itaterisha, were underneaWmons-men. tube t 9nheiefldM #hdsk.
9 10
-So in,n e m fer"that E ThPC-~ sial.~ ^..^ "-6
~<u 11 mater'i'al','~h'e~bhyildt$ silly'had tr rf fle~tnesegerthesthh o@r
,t 12 deskr thitFWe9*hef" Seek ~r He was rifling through the mate als t
is on top of her desk.
Thpyng,pp.J,egs,on,glgfor,th,i[
- _fH1
^
^
7' 14 6.1 It.^ ~W J.~_.22 7 z....
, _1._f.
m 15 PW9Mitty."~Ylid's W ey*'wYas"n80*o*Y M.
The results of the 16 survey were not going to be used for any particular radiation'
{
17 protection work that was going to occur the next day. %ey, 18 sutvoy was m pa w=== r u.- 1rasr 11tytVf9Rft3F."*Thefw* Woo co
%w- -
_.e.mm
-.....n_
19 reason for that individual to be searchTfity"forah,eaarvey.
20 And, y 4 ht-l a M -y1%%.bE99Gh..%4h4 21 matht9HM:echnitiWh'Y'dsilik aria nthi1ree across 22 the wipes.
23 Now, we've got a process and Clegg mentioned the 24 stop-work authority procedure; and there's a procedure out 25 there and has been in place since at least 1990 about how to J
58 1
handle concerns, safety concerns.
This individual did not m
<2 follow that procedure, because what that procedure says is get 3
ahold of your supervisor and come up with a course of action 1
4 to take care of the situation.
If 79R$hg. york, stop -
s vort, but"if"yee'% got 'a ' concern',"get4tG_^ zw 6
supervisor and we19teut a way to '801've'the' problem:
Well, the j
7 individuahp)gggt g._t;o:do that 8
A. CLEGG CRAWFORD: "ABd"UtYnf.'#)io8'eG'n.,~-" m,.had an 9
escolaticti'dIh68e'.""So"if the supervisor and the employee-10 could'not resolve the difference, it bounced up a level, and i
11 then it would finally bounce up a third level where the 12 division manager would get it resolved.
So-that process was 13 documented on how to do that.
14 FREDERICK J. BORST:
-. T navi d ___~* t dpes, the
^
Is individual't'd6Pn'"uiMi"tfTidr&lf'*Ethceentathese'wtjpes to 16 Astermineuif-th e-n-e- rindiosotive,mattecipkg,grc oot. Je,,.,
17 pro gchtha48eWtHtr'f6tYeW9Mys%.hth,e, Health 18 Physigad4@eEMimoskarrie.etc thee.uosks.aiteethe.Olainant 19 informeebathe=euperviser-of the f act that.hafd found.,this 20 matertefatt94fffd*effitfe'*3hd had 'tuken it upovr himself to count 21 tWe WIpFS.
At which time the supocrisorwsaid, k M s ant ycu r
w 22 m.
23 going throu,qh, oy4pur, people's desksvest4s6etwLte area.
24 There's.no reason to go through people's desks.
Thgrp was a counseling sessiontb" inform the ihdividtial'That*ttiat was not 25 1
... ~. ~
... - ~.
59 l
1.
acgapdreble4M tudorsh-agGtW.
And'having gone~through 2
that, thWIF N wtsr h tb you give ths h t4that shows s'
tNMpenomere counted to. the,indlyldual-that 4seo doing 4
the n. ;, ~sN aha could, finish har.may*Aly survey?
- Well, pnm s
the individual,hsd threem away'the results. 4 Took it upon 4,c himself to rifgggh% papers, tg,hy4pps, count 6
i ts-them, and th @, g g g hs) Now, h tkis 7
doesn'g%3erveemmes:de 'stMMWitfr'Wat' a
9 happened there.
I don't understand that.
H N Wway the 10 rqsm12asedhthmK99 W ey.
11 Okay.
The supervisor says, Listen, Dueglpf WfWEY four efforYI N N M M U J L ^_- " '- ^"' af - *h* Off1o4_;
12 thew 6 @ E mii^#un.. 7 1 ^_;___T that's a 1s 14 workahte geffby.
I don N want you going tiruuyn~ m o's daskar enettyou%[a $17d*tsLs KZ_ _-, ^ :~ 1*;;; 4cr them, is 16 you. speed.te. W h eesulte c " g L __ *shet h results wer&*EMPsWFaDInTsTdidirsaiWi" So =%^
- -". don't have 17 is those res,ults, n1==== writa W,t,gg_hnig_a rp,tm Mi%hL the 19 results of vruw
_ -- tshake h,433g,,g @.,guryay for
-n r --^
20 Fe
- dit'*fttbMf7 26tn.
21 N,,E,th,the.,sfupervi,sor.,,again,.. sits dpwn with the con gainant And says,,Di4,,ysubpritanthab aote? to the 22 23 complainant.,And.be says,,No,.,1.did.ngt, Well, the f
24 individual was asked to do that by the supervisor on February 26th, and on February 27th it wasn't done.
He didn't seem to 2s e
... ~
-...... ~
60 1
be following up again on an assignment that was given to him 2
by the supervisor.
IO there was a concera-aboutr:these wipes, 3
youM Jhink;hg d.,want to get those results to the' individual 4
so,thetathey.Wd be accounted for and4he 1mtwry completed, s
paperwork taken care of.
6 The supervisor, again, said, Listen, if you're going 7
to take and count somebody's wipes for them, you need to get a
that information so they can finish their survey.
Please give 9
a note to the technician so she can do that.
I6fauthe second 10 time he's beea-requested to do thet,"Tet3ft!51"y -99h 11 FebrifaiT 78th rolls artmnd.
In this case he had, in 12 f act, writtenws: lets tet the=techntoistn, 6-bawaght'4n 13 to,ygg.AmaltAphysses__ supervisor,.andAbst wam.andr And why-was 14 she mad?-.4m11FfiYtat' ea11, she was mad because the j
u 15 individua.l.-badataken-the<matert1rY'trfi"Weesk; and not just 16 material that was sitting there on the top, but the+meterial i
17 he.had.vten1679@thl1Ty%CthFouW air her< papers.on. the top of i
is her.dealev r"6 J'ib M She was not happy that that had happened.
19 I don't think I would have been happy either.
20 Thg gggmenthingtshe wasiooncerned 4 bout was, yes, he 21 he4mAggit$ma.Jtem,4 note,. but he'd gone-way.beyond the authority i
22 that the-supervisor had given him tp. write..that.no.tp.
The 23 supervisor asked,him to, write a note with the results of his 24 survey so she could finleh the moitth"lystirvey.
In addition to 25 that, he chose to make a sarcastic comment in the note about,
~.
- 61 1.
' I would.have finished.your survey for you but I've never seen m
,2 a"._, %.~..'tt.is way, and I don't understand how you can do
~
3 a' survey this way.but that's your business.
4 Okay.
It appeared to us like this individual was i
5 taking on some kind of supervisory authority here.
He had no l
6 right -te4 eave'e-1Nyte for another individual questioning her-7 work..and.,how aha.did Jhar, job. - That wasn't his place, wasn't s
his job.
He was 6 td'9titF T 'n Te'irTUf M is'dits of the stirvefTNMNf Yd7%[oi13 tfie"d5[t}f8rTyTaTTfTaB* given.
9 10
-L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
Is there a specific technical 11 weakness with the way that PSC technician had been'doing the' 12 survey?
13 FREDERICK J. BORST:
No.
14 GARY CANBORN:
Tlamsschop6asingggggg,g tossed p ar,as reconstruct later on, and there was general agreement 15 16 that it accurately reflected what was in the original note.
I 17 bett1sver"M,JgpkjWcetad the,othe-techn&cian. had not is intijnt N.....JMy' A&ph' thE T6cYtibni6f' ainp'~of the wipes 19 sh N + eink that was the beeis-for the-20 sarcastic -- ~ uh=1,Jg4 believe.was.the sarcastic comment.
21 FREDERICK J. BORST:
That was certainly one way to 22 annotate the su way, to indicate where tl.e wipes were taken.
23 There are other ways.
Some of the other technicians use 24 scratch pieces of paper to keep track of where the wipes were 25 taken.
So, again, just to put notes together to finalize the i
i
62-I survey there were several different ways that were done, and
,2 just by virtue of the fact that there were no survey points
^
3 with the wipes didn't mean that she didn't have some kind of 4
tracking system establishea.
5 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
Did she, do you know?
6 FREDERICK J. BORST:
She indicated she did, and 7
afterwards the survey was put together, you know, and compiled 8
and put into records storage.
9 EH a BROWN:
It's still not clear to me what was the 10 ultimate outcome of the wipes issue.
What did you do about
)
11 it?
12 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Well, the wipsa-were all cle n.
13 There was no activity on any of'the wipes.
As I mentioned,*we 14 had talked to the complainant about the fact that we didn't 15 want him going through people's desks; and if he iras going to 16 complete a wipes survey for somebody, he needed to leave the 17 results for them and were still there.
So that was on 18 February 27th, and on February 28th, then, we got to the fact 19 that the technician received the note and was not happy about 20 it, felt like he had taken material from her desk, and had 21 left %er a note that, in her perception, was very sarcastic.
A g @ M., h.4 mbaeng&staaet
- the 22 23 Mamat6.2
" z_ - ;
J"
--sstat.'6-tactualmi art and sa @ M ' 6 N *wS t aberTil IEihe' o
e 24 offitY1 tea ^.' Don't bring wipes into the office area.
We've 25
m.
~
63 1
talked about it.
There was a night order out there.
Have you 2
had a chance to read that night order?
She_ingpated shg had
~
m.--.
not. -- - ^ ^.; ihg"nt oldet.
In any event, he said, Okayw 4At
~
~~
3
,y --
4 me,2^^^h,' ~ TVQou' Our ' expectation'that*itM8kTy' to s
5 bring these mategiAla.inte the office &. mad and-==.ws, were
~,-
concerned, that situatio,n,,sbould.ha.ve.been.Qright there.
6
.. _ _ =
7 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
You know, you've gone to great a
lengths to provide a contextual fabric for discussion about 9
the complainant, you know, that individual's background; and to you've gone back several weeks, months to lay the groundwork.
11 Wouldn't it be fair to go through a similar exercise for the 12 PSC technician, because it's difficult to talk about this I
is event outside the context of that individual's work 14 performance and history and interrt.lations.
I think 15 that's -- I'm not sure how relevant it is, but it*seems that 16 it would be relevant.
There is history there that bears upon 17
.your perception, your perspective and, perhaps, maybe our is perspective on that exchange at the end of February.
Would 19 you agree?
20 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Sure.
21 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
%MA:S$i4MpumpdidtstaA69 rech had 22 s
s.
We had disciplined that HP tech, but we 23 believed the discipline that we'd taken was appropriate and 24 believed it was behind; it wain't forward.
And that he should 25 not be judging that tech based on things that we've taken from k
m-64 1
a corrective action standpoint with her or disciplinary 2
standpoint.
His perception we did net think was founded for 3
the short period of time he was loci at.
But, certainly, j
4 ve will not tell you that that was the greatest HP tech in the s
world because we had taken some disciplinary action with 6
respect to that employee in the past.
7 PREDERICK J. BORST:
Really, my perception was, from 8
the period of about September of 1990 through March of 1991, 9
the PSC technician was doing a competent job; and there really I
l to wasn't much to indicate that she was having continuing 11 problems.
RestRf6zu, adjstii,"U.% 'tC 1,_ ^ - " ;~ h ti e 12 frame cha_v==r ni"-a-a_ *=n-wa=k
-"- = turi
- ch= knaw that i
}*
13 a"---
_ n; Gid Ve ~ds m.i strike.
14 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
In accordance with our union is contract, it was staged.
You know, a verbal, a v'itten, a r
16 time off, and termination.
She'd gone through that third 17 step, and, consequently, we believed her performance had is improved adequately so that she could maintain her job.
19 FREDERICK J. BORST:
You know, through this process
- . 3 -
I'vebbeen innr====A,hy,,,h Mfhmt the Qgpa}Ef pppbag. Labor 20 Y
21 and asees=ourbias.*te'ssum1>the30sumpht and 22 th p W be.
I mean, the T=9 '-- t z:22_~inau 23 prq1;mstion.
In a sMlaan deetti;;;'R.y_^_ _-_4erwis& meed toward 24 og JSC. +=hn L a t - J It W~Ww<w%n k m t.on then 25 for loypity.
We've got lots invested in them, and we tend to 1
-~
65 1
give our company people due credit, the benefit of the doubt, 2
and credit for improvement in wanting to do a good job.
3.
Again, since September -- between September of '90 and March 4
of '91 I didn't really see much in her performance that was a 5
problem.
6 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
Had the complainant expressed to 7
you concern about the PSC technician's ca.pability and a
competence?
9 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Well, he mentioned in one of the 10 documents that he'd raised numerous concerns, and from a 11 documentation standpoint, really, the only two that I'm aware f
12 of were the two that were raised on February 26th and on : trch 1
13 14th.
14 BILL BROWN:
How long did this wipett issue go on?
15 You had a status report on February 6.
How long before that 16 did you know about it, and what was the date that it'was 17 finally resolved?
18 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Well, February 6th, again, was 19 the point in time in which we published the policy that said 20 don't bring this material into the office area.
The 21 complainant found the material on February 26th.
And we're 22 working our way in that direction and I'll get to the 23 conclusion --
24 BILL BROWN:
How long did you know about it?
25 FREDERICK J. BORST:
I didn't find out about it until
+
66 1
March or February 26th.
. 2 BILL BROWN:
Well, someone knew about it on February 3
6th, right?
4 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
No.
February 6th was just a s
statement that, in general, we don't want material to come 6
into the office area.
7 BILL BROWN:
I see.
8 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
At that point in time we knew, 9
again, that this was common practice that people had been 10 bringing this in, and the group had decided that we don't want 11 to have this happen anymore.
So there was not a specific 12 event that happened on February 6th that the issuance of a policy that said in the future let's do our best to keep th'ese is 14 out --
15 BILL BROWN:
So you knew there was a problem, just 16 not a problem with this particular technician?
17 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Yeah, there was a perception, 18 again; and it was well-founded, I think, that people had been 19 kind of casual about bringing wipes, radioactive sources, 20 potentially contaminated stuff into the office area.
21 BILL BROWN:
It just seems like a long time to take 22 care of a simple issue.
23 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Well, it didn't come out until 24 February 26th.
25 BILL BROWN:
Yeah, but you knew that there was a g
67 1
general problem earlier..
2 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
And we put out a policy, and the 3
first time we had any indication that people were not 4
following the policy was on February 26th.
Between the period 5
of February 6 and February 26th no one brought a concern to 6
us.
We didn't observe any concern.
So as far as we were 7
concerned, people had taken that to heart and were not a
bringing radioactive materials in the office area.
9 BILL BROWN:
Was McTiernan the only individual who lo brought the concern?
11 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Well, the technician in this 02 particular case was convinced that other people throughout is this period were, in fact, bringing materials into the offi'ce.
14 And the complainant knew this and was just choosing to make an 15 issue of the fact that she brought material in th'e office.
16 Now, there's nothing to indicate that that, in fact, happened.
17 But her perception was that other people were doing the same 18 kind of thing; the complainant knew it and was not taking i
19 similar action against them as he was against her.
And that r
20 was kind of her basis for saying, It looks like something --
21 you know, I'm being treated differently by this individual 22 than the other members of the department; why is that?
23 BILL BROWN:
But I guess I'm getting the impression 24 that you're more concerned about how the concern was brought 25 up than the fact that there was a problem with the wipes.
Am
68 1
I in error hero?
2 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
No.
I was very concerned that 3
material kept coming into the area in spite of the policy that 4
has been publithed on the 6th of February, and that's why the 5
supervisor sat down her on the 28th of February and said and 6
reiterated that policy and said, We don't want to have this 7
happen.
You know, and our feeling was that should have taken a
care of it.
9 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
I R h yem bed s ;;ci zzly said 10 that-the technicLan<who had put the<wipee enaher' desk'+was.
11 not -- ind1 cat 3d phe.was not avars,p1.$$1st.policys.that was put 12 out on February the 6th in the night orders?
13 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Well, there's a complicating' 14 there because after the complainant found the wipes on the is 26th and brought it to the supervisor's attention *, the 16 supervisor put out another night log on the 26th saying, 17 Hero's a reminder, everybody, that we don't want this material 18 in the office area.
And I think she may have been referring 19 to that February 26th night order, because she was off shift 20 and just came in on the 28th.
21 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
But if I look at your February the 22 6th night order, is the indication at the bottom of the first 23 page --
24 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Um-hmm.
15 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
-- who has signed this?
69 1
FREDERICK J.
BORST:
That's right.
.2 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
They're aware of it?
^
3 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Uh-huh.
4 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
Can you take a look at that page 5
and tell me if she signed that?
6 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Yes, she did.
7 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
- WTY81%D 8
FREDERICK J. BORST:.g
. _ _ _._. m....
9 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
So it would indicate that she was aware of.....a ~--the issue before the wipes were found on h,, desk.
.y,._,.,
_ ~....., _
lo er
%, _,. _.. m - -
11 Is that what I can read into that?
12 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
That's true.
She was aware that 13 that night order had been written; and, in theory, our 14 expectation would have been she would have reviewed this 15 attached material and should have been familiar v'ith the 16 contents.
17 I geese *es=4*4eek-st-this-etine&e-tJultnefr what I would 18 have, e xpechse.4srdt'somebody f oun5 ' ItatWrial" en * -another 19 person *e desb&hakadidn't' belong'there, that person would have r#
simb;--- +^,tha other person and said, Listen, there's a 20 w _
s, 21 night order log out there saying we're not supposed to have
,awu.
22 this material in here.
I'm not comfortable with it being in 1
23 the area that I'm eating lunch.
Would you take care of it?
24 Or I found this-material, for whatever reason.
I counted the 25 wipes; here's the results.
And oh, by the way, please
,n-a m 70 1
redoulile your efforts to keep this material out of the office 2
area.
3 And, again, in an atmosphere that I was trying to 4
create as a team, that would have been a normal approach; and s
if I've got a problem with the way Gary's doing business, I 6
should be able to talk to Gary about the way he's doing 7
business.
And Gary should be able to say back to me, Yeah, s
you're right.
There was a night order out there.
I guess 9
it's just habit that, you know, I've been bringing this 10 material'in all these years *.nd I'll try and do better.
11 Thanks for counting the survey for me.
But, I mean, the two 12 individuals we're talking about here were corresponding 13 through the Health Physics supervisor.
You know, they were' 1
14 not even carrying on conversations with each other. Anyway, on l
15 February --
j 16 DEIRDRE SPAULDING:
Excuse me, A l)_ggyrect,,t,o say 17 that you wqre.,n,,o,t, pappy.,wj$h.th,e way that complainant handled is himself with the wipes issue; and, additipj),g41yu $hpre were 19 other concerns that you had about the complainant that you
=-
= aen. nam.v -.. -
20 were not g g gtp prior to March 4th?
But.4espite those l
21 rising doubts, you illustrated you were taking into account 22 what you perceived his technical skills to be, that you 23 decided on March 4th not to put his.name.on the list; is that 24 correct?
25 FREDERICK J. BORST:
That is correct.
0
m.
..~ _. _
I 71 1
JAMES L. MILHOAN:
One last question on the wipes..
2 When the individual,.McTiernan, for whatever. reason, found the
- t swipes on the' desk, was the.other individual available at that 4
particular time?
The question I'm really asking is, would it
)
5 have been unreasonable to expect him, if he found wipes on the-6 desk, to go ahead and count the wipes because of the potential l
1 7
for contaminated material in the eating area?
s FREDERICK J. BORST:
My memory serves me to say that i
9 she-was gone for a couple of days during that period and came 10 back on the 28th, end I'm not sure if she was available or i
l 11 not.
12 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
In light of the fact that she was j
possibly gone for that time, would your expectation been th'at 13 14 he should have had the wipes counted or he leave the wipes 15 there until she gets back?
l 16 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Well, I guess I don't have a big
)
17 problem with the fact that he elected to count the wipes.
I Is mean, I can see some basis for that.
I would have preferred 19 that he would have talked to the supervisor first and say, 20 Hey, I found this material in here, you know; now what do we 21 do?
That would have been my preferred outcome for that.
22 A. CLEGG CRAWPORD:
But I think the fact that he 23 threw the data away, the results away, indicates there was 24 some kind of personality conflict, whether it was with her, j
25 specifically, or with the department or the supervisor.
There l
v.
72 1
was something there.
You could make the argument that he was 2
doing it because he was a professional health tech.
And you 3
could make that argument; then he would have kept the data and 4
not thrown it away because he knew that she had to finish her 5
survey.
6 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Boy, I'm trying like crazy to 7
get out of February here.
8 (LAUGHTER) 9 February 28th, PSC technician came back and was upset to about the fact that material had been taken; was upset about 11 the tone of the note; was again reminded that we didn't want 12 radioactive material in the office.
The Health Physics 13 supervisor said, Listen, I want you to get together with th'e 14 complainant; let's get this thing worked out.
You know, the is supervisor shouldn't be involved in all these dis ~cussions.
16 He's got supervisory work to do.
17 So she said, Pine, I'd like to meet with him.
I want la a member of my bargaining unit there as a witness to make sure 19 that we all understand what's happening in that meeting.
20 Okay, that's February.
lj6gggdgesMer$gthe.Nealth pitysics. supervisor..again 21 22 talked Wcompkaim and-counseled 4 tim elmoututhe >tene of the 23 note.
He said, Listen, af ter havinga leek'ed W themsete -- the 24 supervisoo aefreed%$le* mete wds dof br$f' thi'01M1-and e
25 inappropriate and he counseled the-complainene en-the tone of
I the note and the fact that he'd gone beyond the authorJ*.y.
2 was given to him by the supervisor.
3 When the supervisor described the note to me, I 4
agreed that that note really was sarcastic.and really went 5
beyond what the complainant was asked to do.
So on March 1st 6
the supervisor said, Okay, I'm going to get you folks together 7
and we'll talk this thing through.
And the individual a
complainant said, Fine.
9 That brings us to early March and, again, on March 10 4th the release list was put out; and;-aacyas, pointed out, in 11 spite of. rising concerns and all these things that had 12 happened, * !Mf =Adual's name was not on tiha list.
13 So were all the conditions in place prior to March' 14 4th that led to the release of this individual?
Mo.
No, they i
15 were not.
And was the individual released because he was i
16 raising safety concerns?
No, he was not.
And I had a perfect 17 opportunity if I wanted to release the individual.
March 4th 18 was a release date'.
I'd just gone through all this.
My 19 supervisor was spending a tremendous amount of time -- I knew 20 this was going on.
I knew the status of this.
If-I.really 21 hasidemmeutdaahm a.-basis to release the complainant, he would 22 have been on the March 4th list.
Then you would have had a 23 scoop, but you don't.
24 Now, that brings us to March 6th.
And in reviewing background and notes and everything else I could find, there 25 I
74 1
were no less than four meetings in my department on this day 2
dealing with this event with various casts of characters.
It 3
was like a Shakespearean play.
Some group of people would 4
come in and they'd leave.
Different group of people would 5
come in; they'd talk.
PSC people, contract people, management 6
people.
7 One of the meetings -- and a meeting that we were a
leading up to.
There was a meeting here with the complainant, 9
two Public Service Company technicians, and the supervisor; lo and it's not clear to me, but I think the site coordinator for 11 the contract agency, ARC, was in this meeting also.
At that 12 point in time Tgain, the PSC people raised their concerns about the taci that, Hey, our rights have been violated, if' 13 14 you will, our privacies have been invaded, material has been
)
15 stolen from the desk, and the note that was left carried a 16 condescending, sarcastic communications style.
17 Now, I mention here -- and we've talked about it i
is before -- canadphomobthree. occasions 4houprevious, week the 19 ind R1 cnnnlaiggn,t,had been counseled about nQt going 20 through gogQdeskrq saking sure you.. leave a note for peop g
,,their-surveys.
Also, that complainant had 21 22 been, in the past -- and I don't have a date for this.
But I 23 know that it occurred -- he was counseled by the ARC site i
24 coordinator, and he was talked to by at least one of the ARC 25 technicians about the fact that his style was not conducive to
75 1
building teamwork within the department.
2 So this all happened and during this meeting, also
^
3 that I mentioned up here before, the Public Service Company techniciamleltninhat she was'-owed an apologyaby complainant, 4
5 which complainant provided.
6 However, the technician from Public Service Company 7
was not satisfied with the outcome of that meeting, and she a
and the other technician involved, who was also the union 9
steward for Health Physics, requested m,mme h with me for that same day; and sotae add Ulonairmonger s,came out.
The 10 J
11 perception of both of these individuals was complainant was 12 slandering her competence again.
I l
i
[
Some perioglo(,$lme had.goes byshofere'-any procedu're )
13 14 violations -or. incidents er anyning had.hmen attributable to is either one of4 heseeindividuald.
Theig p & M.was 16 complainantt #555644*%)HHWteYling"5n Mffat'Mbbld 'listan 17 that Public Service Company technicians were incompetent and that thg..ppatreettst'"dfhWtYd"oTeDo'lM4ftist@-
18 l
19 specifj " % W.
20 The individual was not convinced that complainant was 21 sincere in his apolrgy to her about the offense actions and 22 the tone of the note.
23 The technician perceived sexual harassment on the 24 part of the complainant against her.
Why?
Well, I mentioned 25 it before.
Her perception was there were other people.
She 1
i
76 1
was tha only fcnale in the departcent.
Hsr perception was 2
there were other people bringing materials into the HP office 3
area; complainant knew it and complainant was not vigorously 4
pursuing that activity with them and was with her.
In her 5
mind that constituted harassment based on gender.
6 Furthermore, they were concerned-because in 7
discussions with the complainant he ha'd indicated and told a
them that he refused to change his behavior.
At this point in 9
time the individual said, Listen, Ted, you've got to do lo something; take appropriate action.
Let us know what's going 11 to happen here.
And when I asked them what they considered 12 appropriate actions to be, they said, You should release the 13 complainant.
..<,-.~e,,,,,.
14 Okay.
Now,"$'s I'm sure you can imagine, I was having 15 grave doubts about keeping'this individual.
Based on 16 everything that happened the week before, in spite of all J
17 that, the list had gone up.
He was not on the list but this 1
18 was new stuff; this was new stuff.
I Wgs.. net eware -- and, certaihly,any.<$ N sexual' harassment..lE lfbught"up,"that's
- w. t 19 going"t& g;t'cf-sttention; that was never brought up before.
20 21 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
Excuse me.
Did they actually use 22 the expression " sexual harassment"?
23 FREDERICK J.
SORST:
Yes, she did.
Okay, I saw that 24 it was time to look at some alternatives.
If I was not going 25 to keep the complainant, was there someone else that would be l
1_.
_. _ _ c..mm.m 77 1
a better choice?
It wasn't that I was out to get the 2
complainant.
I had an opportunity on March 4th, if I would 3
have tried -- or wanted to do that.
But I wanted to look at 4
some alternatives; things weren't going well here.
Was there 5
a better choice that would make the department a better, 6
stronger place, to improve teamwork?
7 Well, I went back to some of the impressions that I a
had been forming about a lease -- or less senior contract 9
technician that I had mentioned earlier, was certainly 10 technically competent, had done a good job in response to a i
11 contamination event at the plant.
That response had been 12 recognized by the NRC resident inspector, seemed to have good is interpersonal skills.
I hadn't gotten any complaints with
- 14 anyone having any trouble dealing with the individual.
15 In fact, if you go back to the issues list again, on 16 the second page of that issues list with a No. 4 on it, it 17 talks about wipe counting with a frisker; and the perception is was we needed to develop the ability to count wipes using a 19 frisker and when it can be done.
That particular issue was 20 assigned to the technician, female technician in the 21 department, Wanda Porter, and Keith Bare, who was a less 22 senior and Health Physics contract HP tech that I was 23 mentioning earlier.
They shared this item; they worked on it, 24 worked it to completion.
Never had any problems.
25 So there was some good things here with this
m u-----.,a.
78 1
alternative.
It looked to me like that might be something 2
that I should pursue further.
Appeared to be technically 3
competent and responded well.
I'd observed that; NRC observed 4
that.
Personal skills were good and he was taking on issues; s
didn't have problems with people in the department.
But I-6 didn't feel like I had all the information I needed to make f
i 7
that decision yet.
j s
Sori-set. down.on Marqh.7th with,all;Jivg PSC Health Physics technicians, and I po'ed the fo1'ibUihg ques' tion to
~
9 10 thest Should 1-keep Keith Bare?
Yes or no? <Should-b heep.
11 Keith Bare?
And the PSC technicians were unanimous that, Yes, 12 Ted, you should-keep Keith Bare.
Now, I didn't say, Should I 13 keep Keith instead of George; who do you like better?
I f
14 simply asked them about Keith.
The reason I didn't ask them about George is because based on everything we'd 3ust gone is 16 through, I had a pretty good impression of what their opinion 17 of George was.
I knew two of the people had requested that he is be released; two out of the five, 40 percent.
I'd also gotten 19 complaints from a third Public Service Company technician 20 about the complainant..So I had 60 percent of my staff that, in C past"~Med'-indicated some concern with this individual; 21 22 and now I had a 100 percent that had no concern with what 23 appeared to be an alternative choice.
24 Well, that was good information; that was good.
25 However, I still didn't feel it was fair to proceed without
79 I
talking to George, to find out if there was so'ething there I 2
was missing.
A lot of these things didn't make sense to me; I
~
3 was trying to figure out -- was I confused?
Was I missing 4
something?
Was there something there that I just couldn't 5
see?
6 39 I set up a meeting on March 8th with the I
7 complainant and the Health Physics supervisor.
Now, at that meeting again I went back to my key beliefs and initiatives, a
talked about some of the things that were important to me:
9 the shared responsibilities, collaboration, problem solving, to 11 teamwork.
And I expressed my concern with some of his attitudes and behaviors, specifically in the area of 12 communications, problem solving, and conflict management; that 13 14 I was seeing soma concerns with it.
And I provided him an Opportunity to talk to those to let me know what &as going on is 16 there.
Was it a problem that I just didn't understand?
What 17 was happening there?
Was there some willingness to change 18 there that I just hadn't seen.
Because up to this point, what I was operating under was if people ur.derstood that there was 19 a problem, they would be willing to change to make that 20 21 Problem better or eliminate the problem.
So I sat down with George, talked about some of my 22 concerns, provided him with an opportunity to demonstrate his is 24 willingness to change.
George, at that meeting, admitted that
.e
. ~...,
his communications st'yle was sarcastic and' felt th'at that was 25
80 1
an appropriate communications style.
He was more than willing 2
to admit that there were problems in the department.
He also
^~
took the p y r:osition that those were not his problems, that those cow w 3
4 problems were out there some'wnere, that he was, net part of the 5
problem.
6 At the conclusion of the meeting he turned to me and 7
said, I'm not going to change.
Now, I think you have to admit a
this was a prettynarteejant' attitude; I mean, for anybody --
9 for a contract tech, for a Public Service Company technician, lo for a Chuck Fuller, for anybody to be taking this kind of a 11 position.
12 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
I'm not certain I understand what 5
13 he meant by change.
He's not going to change what?
His 14 communications style?
15 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Cofl9%WPN@l%#Mygiaing to change his communicad on stylY fieidabse tas:D itvit'was s
i 16 17 appropriate.
Is L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
Sarcasm, sarcastic approach?
19 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Um-ham, yeah.
20 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
That was the only issue that 21 involved change?
22 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
That's really what I wanted him 23 to do was change his way of interacting, and I thought the 24 rest of this stuff would fall into place.
25 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
Although didn't you, during this
81 1
discuss, talk about teamwork?
2 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
I did.
3 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
And didn't he basically say he 4
wouldn't change to become a member of the team?
5 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
I told him -- that's right.
I 6
told him and I went back with my key beliefs and initiatives 7
and told him that teamwork is important; and I felt in order a
to be a member of the team, you know, you have to be able to 9
work with people and be flexible and change, you know, to 10 accommodate different people and work together.
And he 11 indicated he wasn't willing to do that, told me he wouldn't 12 change.
13 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
Did you at any time during this' 14 discussion mention the allegations of harassment, sexual is harassment, and confront him with any of that evidence?
16 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
No, I did not, sir.
No.
And I 17 thought about that and, really, the reason I didn't do that was I was -- the situation appeared to be escalating and I was la 19 trying to de-escalate that situation.
And my professional judgment as a manager in that case was, I had this fire in 20 front of ne and I would have thrown that on there, it would 21 have been like throwing a can of gasoline on the fire; so I 22 u
didn't bring that up..
L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
But his sarcasm was one of those 24 factors that was well known before March 4th, before you 25
, J L
-_.m
~....__
_ ~.hmawa.-.ci.:2. Am.u c._u.e r
82 1
decided to keep his name off the list?
It was the harassment 2
issue -- I guess the allegations of harassment that you 3
received on March 6th that caused you to replace -- put his 4
name on the list?
Not his sarcasm -- sarcasm, I gathered from 5
your discussion, was just a characteristic of him all along, 6
that there was nothing new about that.
7 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Certainly the harassment was one a
factor.
We've got some pretty serious lines of charges here:
9 invasion of privacy, theft, slander, harassment.
10 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
But those: -- excuse me.
11 A. CIEGG CRAWFORD:
As I hhvW%ellld8tf Ted,b 12 harassment was only one factor.
letat was poeti$My taate:
important to us,,Jwas_t.ha lack of-ta==manqrar,4hegusal to be 13 part of thd"tdhuT brw; test that he did slander gug -, all of 14 15 our techs, not just Marna that they..waremf4 comps 4ent.
16 Refusal to change _h.is behavior, his sarcastic att,itude; and, 17 incidentally, there also appeared to be,a sexua harassment u
18 problem.
Thig,wa,s,not somebody that wanted to take and be a 19 part ot=4 6,tg e us from this poi,nt tg g t point.
This Yd'<a persounthat was on the outside pointing the finger 20
%r 21 all the time.
22 FREDERICK J. BORST:
You know, probably this refusal 23 to change was the thing that bothered me as much as anything.
24 Again, my expectation, my hope entering that meeting was he 25 would say, Well, listen, you know I'm sarcastic.
That's just
~
83 1
the way I am, and in other jobs I've been on I haven't had 2
this problem, working together as a team.
And I'm not sure what's different about this team, but I'm certainly willing to 3
try and get along and make this a good place to work and get 4
5 along with my team members.
And that's what I wanted to hear; 6
that's why I gave him an opportunity to discuss that, rather 7
than not meeting with him, a
But, you know, what I found was, it appeared to me that since the March 4th list came out that ha felt like had 9
tenure; that now that he wasn't on that list he was guapanteed to 11 a job.
Well, that's never the case.
Contractors are never 12 guaranteed appointment.
You know, it was like he was saying, Hey, you know, now you've got me; you're stuck with me.
This 13 14 is the way I an.
Here we go.
That attitude was very -- that is bothered me a lot.
His refusal to change was just something I 16 had a hard time dealing with.
17 BILL BROWN:
This was March 6th but I still go back is to February 6th where, on your list, you indicated No. 12 that there were radioactive materials being in the same area that 19 eating and drinking and smoking was allowed; that is, the HP 20 21 office.
The need was to identify areas in which this occurs 22 and why it occurs.
Here it is a month later on March 6th.
23 Gee, it seems like I'd be a little frustrated after a whole month that this proble,was still existing.
24 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Well, let me go back through 25 I
. ~.
a..
l i
'84 i
1 that again.
On February 6th common practice had been to bring 2
this material into the office area.
On February 6th we put 3
together a policy that says we don't want to do that anymore.
j From the period of February 6th through the period of February 4
i 26th no one was made aware of any problems in this area.
It j
5 6
looked like the policy was working and people were adhering to j
7 it; so there was no problem.
Policy had been generated.
i 8
People seemed to be living with the policy.
9 On February 26th we got an indication that a person to was not following that policy, and that particular person was 11 counseled on February 28th.
To us, that's the end of that 12 story.
13 BILL BROWN:
But you indicated that there were oth'er people that appsiently weren't -- male individuals that 14 is weren't following the policy and that he had pick'ed out a 16 female individual.
So it's not just one, but there were 17 others, right?
18 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Well, that was her perception; 19 and, again, that --
20 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
Did not have any complaints.
{
Between the 6th and the 26th we had no complaints.
Her 21 argument was, Other people had been doing it all the time, so 22 I did not think I was doing anything wrong.
But we had no 23 knowledge of complaints during that period of time.
24 BILL BROWN:
Did you look into that?
j 25
j tw.
11 85 1
FREDERICK J.
BORST:
We did.
,2 BILL BROWN:
What did you find out?
3 FREDERICK J. BORST:
We had supervisors in the office 4
every day.
So, you know, if'there are things that are visibly 5
apparent, he'll find out.
I tour the area every day and so--
)
l i
l 6
BILL BROWN:
It wasn't your perception that other
(
7 people were --
I 8
FREDERICK J. BORST:
We never noticed it..
t
)
{
9 BILL BROWN:
Well, then, how was it sexual i
10 harassment?
11 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Well, her perception was, her 12 perception.
Sexual harassment is in the eye of the beholder.
13 Her perception was -- I'm serious.
Her perception was it w'as 14 happening and that, for whatever reason, these guys were 15 covering it up and not bringing it up as an item; and they 16 were when she got caught on the 26th.
17 BILL BROWN:
Well, I beg to disagree with you.- I thi& the43#ennihim mlemett~BUCit's' hbt-the 'erclusive la m em~ n +.. n..-........ ~ _.,..,.
thifuf%e an there's nothing else to support.~.,..... sexual harassment.
19 20 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Well,, ansk:L-N said' it was th p,yetveuh. -I said"it' was one of the elements.
21 9
22 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
Excuse me.
But# 'it'sattfe-only 23 el. ament that,wassintroduced after* March'4th/"and that's what's l
so significant about the sexual harassment thing.
Everything 24 25 else you knew when you made your decision.
When you made your
)
{
~
m -
=-...a.-.
l 86 1
decision, I think, to keep the complainant off the list, you j
2 knew everything except the sexual harassment issue and that
~
3 surfaced on March 6th; that's the only new information that 4
came up March 6th?
5 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
No, it's not '- T don't agree with 6
you at all.
In fact, in my opinion, from a management 7
standpoint the one that came up the most significant -- and a
since I'm chronologically more gifted than any of you people.
l 9
(LAUGHTER) 10 I have never sat there in front of my boss and said, I will 11 not change't 'arx1 that came up after thad' point in time.
And to 12 me that la.significant, especially for,a contractor tg,1,9ok 13 you in the eye-and say, -8 tuff it babyr I will not change.
I 14 think that's significant.
15 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
That was significant.
And I had 16 gotten additional information on the alternative to keeping 17 the complainant.
That.was new information and I didn't have 18 that information before.
So that was a new piece.
19 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
So in my mind this is very 20 important because --
21 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
It is.
22 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
What occurred between the time you 23 decided to keep him off the list until the time you decided to 24 put'him on the list?
And three things I've heard; one is his 25 refusal to change, the elleged sexual harassment, and there
. a. c x w u w w. w a r: w m k w w -
- ~a aww.=e T
87 1
was a third one that you just mentioned?
~ ~
m 2
FREDERICK J.
BORST:
That was the alternative, you 3
know, the'iniS M tion I got about the potential alternative to keeplWf-the'e6W[iiainant.
4 5
CHARLES H.
FULLER:
Is there somebody else that you 6
feel comfortable with, technically competent, and the HP staff 7
feels comfortable with?
a FREDERICK J. BORST:
Yeah.
Is there a better choice, 9
you know, is what it boils down to.
You know, I'm looking at to two individuals; which is the better choice?
And I did get 11 some new information in here that tended to confirm which was 12 the better choice.
13 ED HAWKINS:
On your graph up there you have 14 additional concerns raised about the complainant.
Those
~
is are -- in your mind those were all new complaints that you had 16 no knowledge of before this time?
17 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Certainigtpg.pived slander 18 was newv4.gMr.thab lmrqught te sspratMiettitytt. ' The insingg< pag. gear because the tipology was new.
So 19 20 that was a new piece.
The sexual harassment was new.
Refusal 21 to change was new.
22 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
But you didn't investigate any of 23 those allegations or those complaints?
24 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Well, for reasons that will 25 become apparent here, the decision was made to release the
4 n - - -. - c,_
88 1
complainant; and at that point in time, really, necessity to
.2 do a formal investigation disappeared.
3 SALIE O'MALLEY:
Which events are you suggesting that 4
weren't investigated?
I guess -- I'm not sure Ted answered 5
that.
6 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
Well, the complaint of sexual 7
harassment.
I'm -- I guess in looking at the results of our 8
0.I., Office of Investigations look into this.
And the 9
information you provided I can get -- depending on how I read 10 it, I can get the sense that you and your staff didn't think 11 that the individual was being harassed.
12 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
No.
I gave full prudence to her 13 perception that that was, in fact, happening.
Again, she w'as 14 a Public Service Company person and I believed what she told Now, we did -- and, again, the Health Physics supervisor 15 me.
16 was asked about this.
I certainly searched my memory.
We 17 were not able to confirm whether that was, in fact, happening 18 or not, but it was certainly her perception and her belief 19 that it was happening.
And I had no reason to believe that 20 she was not telling me the truth.
21 CHARLES H.
FULLER:
Let's go back to the end of 1990.
22 I believe it was November of '90 when I had received a formal 23 letter from the chief steward that was complaining about 24 events that were happening to Harna Porter.
There were a 25 number of events that had happened just prior to November of
... a ;.__a._
i.w m., v m 89 1
'90, and we had had -- or I had had -- Ted was there, the
.2 chief steward, Marna Porter, maybe Bill Woodard was there --
3 meetings prior to that time about things that were happening 4
to Marna Porter.
5 They were:
flat tire out in the parking lot, broken 6
hard hat, a rock thrown through her window at home, just her 7
logs -- just her logs had been stolen -- excuse me, misplaced.
8 There was another -- oh, trash had been heaped underneath her 9
desk, her bench.
Nobody else's; just her's.
10 So as these things were evolving, you know, you see 11 one and you don't tie it to a sexual harassment or anything 12 else other than prankaters.
And then another one; maybe i
13 that's coincidental.
And then a third one; maybe you'd be ter 14 sit down and talb with the people about what's going on.
15 Now, we did that with her and talked to"her about 16 what's going on and specifically asked, Do you feel like 17 you're being sexually harassed?
And the response back at that 18 time frame, and this is, like, prior to November of '90, was, 19 No.
No, this may be coincidental.
I don't know why it's 2f, happening to me, but I don't feel like I'm being sexually 21 harassed.
22 My question at that point was, Do you feel like 23 you're being harassed?
The answer was, Yes.
Who do you 24 think's doing that?
I think I might know but I really don't 25 want to say, and she had to be pushed very hard by me to
Msa;>,,.-
[
- s.,p.,. w 90 1
identify some' person.
And it was either at that meeting or
,2 subsequent meeting that the name George McTiernan first came 3
up to me, as a person that did see eye-to-eye with Marna 4
Porter.
s Now, but still at that point, say from November of 6
'90 up until March of '91, it was a personality conflict, 7
didn't see eye-to-eye, didn't like to work together or a
whatever, most of the time brouget up by George McTiernan.-
9 Rarely brought up by Marna until the first part of March, 10 March'6th, in which case the unior. steward and Marna, at that 11 point, believed that it was sexual harassment, which was the 12 first indication that I had gotten, based on a conversation i
that we'll get to hear that, you know, Ted brought up to me" 13 14 that, you know, maybe there's sexual harassment here, too.
15 Now, the conversations between November innd March, I 16 did not personally have conversations.
There were 17 conversations that may have gone on that I have been briefed la to and long forgotten about, but in November there wasn't and 19 in March there was, March 6th.
1 20 BD4 BROWN:
I certainly don't blame her for being 21 upset about these events, but*thero a s.ma W. step in between i
e 22 her. thinking.maybe it-was McTiernan'and having. proof that it 23 was McTiernan'and you acting on that.
I'mean, I'm just having 24 a difficult time just seeing -- you seem to be giving great 25 credibility to the fact that she thinks that it was McTiernan i
. 2.
-. xL.1.:...
~. ~ _. -. -
. - -.. -.. -....... ~,...
91 1
without any evidence.
.2 CHARLES H. FULLER:
My impression in November of 3
1990 -- or, maybe, October of
'90.
I don't remember exactly 4
when the date was.
There was no doubt in her mind who the 5
individual was, responsible for this.
But recognizing the 6
seriousness of that assertion, she wouldn't tell me.
7 BILL BROWN:
But a charge is not proof.
8 CHARLES H. FULLER:
I understand that and that's why l
1 1
9 this --
10 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
I think that late 1990 -- and, y
l 11 Chuck, you can verify or deny that we did do an investigation 12 when we had all of these --
l 13 CHARLES H. FULLER:
Absolutely 14 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
things come forward.
We did do a formal investigation and we did not prove that wa's apparent.
15 16 We did not prove it was anybody.
Other than these events that 17 happened, had we had our security involved in it, we could not 18 determine whether it was McTiernan or anybody else.
So we did 19 not at that point in time utilize that to, in any way, condemn George McTiernan, because. we couldn't"pfoire 'a' thingMth the 20 21 for C = anF M ign, other than the fact that these had 22 happened to this HP tech.
That we could prove; we had no idea 23 who had done it.
24 BILL BROWN:
On that basis we can move on, I guess.
15 ED HAWKINS:
I have one more question back to the
...a.=.-
o e.u uan6;LwMAM iKGM'2 &bnW -- & -
92 1
same things I was talking about a moment ago.
As I understand 2
what you said, then, so far, you did follow up to some extent 3
on the perceived sexual harassment?
You did ask some other 4
people, a supervisor?
I'm not sure whether you asked anyone 5
else.
But you did try to confirm or deny that new concern?
6 You did try to confirm the last one, refusal, because you 7
talked to and personally asked him.
Did you do anything to 8
try to confirm the other two as being valid concerns, the 9
first two.
10 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Well, the first two?
11 ED HAWKINS:
Yes.
12 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Well, this one, again, is a 13 perception.
You know, the perception of both of those 14 individuals, not just the female.
And I don't want to set is this as two people against each other.
M dmoth of the 16 Health Physics technicians that were involved in this earlier
.. ~...
,,,......m--
meeting perceived that that,apoJpgy,was,ngt s,ijc}e g 17 18 ED HAWKINS:
The two that were in the meeting?
19 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
The two that were in the 20 meeting.
21 ED HAWKINS:
Okay.
22 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
So, again, that's a perception 23 thing.
And, again, their feeling was that McTiernan was 24 saying that the PSC people were incompetent, and, certainly, I 25 was getting that message from outside the department that
.. _ _ _ _. ~ -. _ _
1 93 people were having concerns about whether the PSC people were j
1 2
competent.
Now, I didn't ask them, Who told you that? or, j
3 Where did you get that impression?
And, certainly, no one
{
4 told me that George was out here, you know, saying these 5
things about your staff.
Now, another thing -- well, two more things, one of 6
which is, you know, Wanda had a perception that she was being 7
a sexually harassed.
Whether that was true or not, it was her 9
perception.
And if those two people were going to continue to work with each other, my view was it was going to be hard for lo them to work together as an effective team when her perception 11 was she was being harassed by this guy, whether it was true or u
13 not.
She was harboring that.
14 Another thing that I did -- in February I did perform 15 an investigation about this survey.
I talked to 'her some more 16 about that, about why the material was in the office, what was 17 going on there.
She indicated that -- she told me that the reason that material was in the desk and hadn't been finished is and submitted for review was the person that would be 19 reviewing her work would be the complainant that had to review 20 21 the survey that indicated it was a survey.
And she was concerned -- and she told me this -- that 22 this would be another opportunity for the complainant to 23 24 harass her.
So that, at least in part, is why she indicated 25 the material was in her desk, in the office, and hadn't been
94 1
processed for review.
.2 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
Did you say that his job was to 3
review that?
4 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Well, we have a checks and 5
balances system where someone does a survey and another 6
person's responsible for reviewing it.
That responsibility 7
rotates on the day shift, depending on who's around and who's a
designated as the lead technician on day shift.
9 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
So it was McTiernan's 10 responsibility to review that survey?
11 FREDERICK J. BORST:
During that period of time.
12 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
So the fact that-he reviewed it, 13 he was doing his job.
That fact that he --
14 FREDERiLK J. BORST:
No.
15 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
-- got it from her desk was 16 not --
17 FREDERICK J. BORST:
No, no, no.
Separate review.
Is This was a review that was supposed to be done of a completed 19 survey.
When the survey was completed, that survey would be 20 sent for review.
Another individual would independently 21 review it to make sure it met all the requirements of the 22 procedures and tech specs, and then it would go into the 23 records.
24 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
It's like an engineering check.
25 FREDERICK J. BORST:
So, no, he wasn't doing that as l
3
a.. -:,. ^%,vW m M,
Rm, 95 l
1 part of his, you know, trying to get this material.
And l
.2 shouldn't have expected it to be ready because it wasn't the l
3 end of the month.
Okay.
1 4
Now, as was mentioned, given all these things, the 5
previous concerns that I had, plus these new things that were 6
coming in, the discussion with the complainant, my perception 7
that there was an alternative available, and the meeting with a
the complainant, we basically said, He's not going to change.
I 9
his behavior.
At that point in time, at the conclusion of to that meeting, I made the dec.ision that he would be released 11 March 8th.
t ThesupervisorandItalkedaboutthat,andIalsh 12 1
13 talked to Chuck about it.
Now, this wasn't normal.
Normally 1
14 when I was releasing contract people I wouldn't go to Chuck and say, Hey, Chuck, I'm going to release Joe or 'ue.
But in S
15 16 this case I had an obligation to do that because of the 17
- seriousness of these charges, again:
slander, sexual 18 harassment, theft.
Those kinds of things are very serious, 19 and I needed for Chuck to know that so that he wasn't hit with
)
20 that and blind-nided and somebody come in and say, Listen, I 21 understand there's charges of sexual harassment in your 22 organization; tell ne all about it.
And him not know; that 23 would have been a career-wounding decision on my part.
24 So it was important for me to get that information to 25 Chuck.
I talked to Chuck about the situation, the basis, and
~ ~ - - - - - - - _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
.., N.
l-.
^
s 1w.i.
96 1
what I would propose to do with the complainant; and Chuck
.2 concurred with that decision.
That was still on March 8th.
~.
3 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
But Woodard disagreed with the 4
decision, I understand?
5 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Bill-championed-retaining 6
Mr. McTiernan because of his technical skills.
He tended to 7
give more weight to the technical side, and I gave more weight a
to the teamwork.
9 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
Did he agEdi kith-you on the lo teamwork issue?,
11 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Yes.
u CHARLES H.
FULLER:
As a matter of fact, on the u
conversation that I had on the 8th of March with Ted, Ted did 14 tell me that Bill's druthers at that point in time was because 15 of the technical competence.
He would demonstrate technical 16 competence. *BL1k+4wented to' ret'did'de~ rg^e'.
o 17 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Well, that's the crux of it and 18 that's why the deci-sion was made to release the complainant on 19 March 8th.
Now, he was informed of the release on March 21st 20 and provided with three weeks' notice; and due to subsequent 21 events which I'll talk about, he was subsequently released on 22 March 22nd.
And the question came up:
Listen, Ted, if the 23 decision was made on March 8th, why wasn't the complainant 1
24 told until March 21st?
That's 13 days; what's going on here?
25 Well, there really was no rush.
Again, I was not out to get
.m.EU_
meu mw._wm.a...Mhte:.w3wY
.m _ _ _.-._
97 1
this guy.
I was looking to reduce staff by four people by
,2 April.
That was a staffing plan and a commitment I made to 3
Chuck.
4 As of this point in time, March 8th, one of the four 5
had already left, and two of the remaining four had given 6
notice that they were going to be leaving the next week.
So 7
. as of March 15, three of the four would be gone.
So I was a
certainly still well within my time frame of releasing four 9
people by the April time frame.
10 Having the complainant, honestly, kept my options 11 open.
I did not want to be put in a position where suddenly 12 the avenue to shipping fuel would be open and there I was with 13 not enough staff to meet the demand.
And through this period 14 of time the complainant, as I mentioned before, was shift qualified, and the less senior HP tech was not sh'ift 15 16 qualified; and the additional period of time tbst we kept both 17 people on board afforded the less senior person a chance to 18 become shift qualified.
So that when the time came I'd have a person that was really more valuable to me and was willing or 19 20 able to take shift.
So there was no release here -- I mean, 21 no rush.
I felt like I had time.
22 GARY SANBORN:
Did someone bother to tell Mr. Bare, 13 the technician who was going to be retained, that he was off 24 the' hook?
15 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
No.
You know, I didn't do that
-w a,.
.r:-
98 1
and I doubt if the HP tech did that, because if he was off the
.2 hook and somebody else had to go on the hook and that person
,s 3
hadn't been informed of it either; so it wouldn't be fair to 4
him.
5 The less senior person -- and both of these people 6
wanted to stay.
The less senior person had indicated when he 7
was giving his notice that he was in no hurry.
He wanted to 8
stay in Colorado.
He'd established residency and was enjoying 9
the area and he was going to stay until the bitter end.
He 10 said, Listen, I'm going to hang in there.
I don't want to go 11 early.
I'm hoping, like you are, that we'll be able to ship 12 fuel, or maybe someone else will decide that they want to go 13 away.
I want to stay and I'm in no hurry.
14 So from our perception we were not in danger that he 15 would go away, and if he did, we probably would have looked at 16 that and said, Well, you know, how about if he goes away and 17 we release the complainant?
You know, do I still have 18 adequate manpower to do what I need to do if both of those 19 people go away?
20 GARY SANBORN:
At any time during this entire chain 21 of events, and particularly between the time you made the 22 decision on March the 8th and the time you informed the l
l 23 complainant, was there a discussion of 10 CFR 50.7 of the 24 recognition of the fact that this individual may have been 25 engaged in what the NRC would consider protected activities;
m..
a.
.-__._.___.m._._m.__a._
i 99
]
1 and any recognition of the fact that terminating his might be
.2 perceived as a violation of 10 CFR 50.7?
i 3
FREDERICK J.
BORST:
No.
No.
W l:A tion 4
mAihdeseemssuseWMir"s'afety issue'and it9NW>mtlimetected activity. -It wou ra ' teamwork insite" arid"itNdN"aMn'bility of s
a some people 'te get along and work toget5er as a team.
6 7
GARY SANBORN:
Did the thought ever cross your mind?
8 FREDERICK J. BORST:
No, because that wasn't the 9
basis for the release.
10
-Okay.
Well, we're moving rapidly heirs.
Let me talk 11 about what happened on March 21st.
Again, ass was mentioned, t
complainantwasnotifiedonMarch21stthat1:ewasgoingtdbe f
12 A
13 released with three weeks' notice; and the way the Health 14 Phys 2vo oCi^... ".c or-
---~iu his response to me that day was
~~
~
15 the. guy n.;; m e,F~iie~ ~jGstFeTame Tt z auv.u.-
h was 16 something that was totally outside of the Health Physics 17 supervisor's realm of experience with letting people go.
is He jumped up, he started yelling at the supervisorc, 19 he stood over him at the desk, intimidating him.
He said he 20 couldn't let him go.
He said, You're letting me go because I 21 talked to QA, and the Health Physics supervisor had no idea 22 what he was talking about at that point in time.
He said, I'm 23 going to go to the NRC.
I'm going to file a lawsuit.
I'm 24 going to get you guys; very agitated, aggravated.
25 Then he changed his character dramatically; proceeded
M' wen _L_.hhW
- +w 100 1
right down in tears and said, Please, isn't there any way that i
.2 you can keep me?
I'm buying a new vehicle.
I can't afford a
~
l 3-new truck if you let me go.
I mean, just, you know, the whole 4
gamut of emotions here.
The'quy was up, he was down, he was s
off the walls, complaining about this, that and the other 6
thing;' indicated that he wanted to talk to the NRC, and we 7
were keeping him from talking to.the NRC.
oing a
crazy. kag,page(se other wayNh I've nem,gaj4nyggggggryLthat.,ntay,,yMpM.nsame-weteessik-9 10 It was d e monsing.
l 11 The Health Physics supervisor was so taken aback by l
1 12 this -- and then the complainant says, You've got to let, go 13 carly.
I want to get out of here.
I want to go home.
fnbed 14 some time.
I've got to think about this.
I want out of here.
15 Well, we're in the middle of a workday.
The cs 16 Supend YYg' y'.u 's emotiona2. msar.e and requDat be]GF ;71_1 - - -&*M4emammmagamamat to see 17
~.s #
1s if, you know, what his next move should M.
So he dismissed 19 the complainant from his office.
20 t,
Let me point out that this guy at this point in time
?
21 was not in handcuffs.
He was free to go anywhere he wanted to
{
22 in the protected area.
If he felt the need to go talk to J.
23 B. Baird, he could have done that.
Instead, he chose to spend 24 that period of time talking with one of the PSC technicians 25 about the course of events here.
__ _ _ _____ A
.._i
-.-i",._m.__
_f.
..imm.._
_._ _~
101 1
Well, after the HP supervisor talked to the security
<2 supervisor, he brought the complainant back in and indicate',
^
3 Okay, I'm going to honor your request.
I'll let you go home 4
earl @f" d== =. Now the complainant..Ji m eyst.,pg,_the other 5
side sayg_1 don't want- +q.gg,home.
I'm not going to leave.
6 I've got an investigation to do here.
I've got people to '.alk 7
to.
I've Jot interviews to con, duct.
I'v'4D"1eetecial and a
records to. get, a,nd I'm in the middle of an investigation.
I 9
don't want to go home.
Io
-Well, obviously, we-werent-ts:;-ix;r' 4ndividual to do those ki nd 'of'~thfhgisi~, and the 'indliridual was aowG
'~
11 12
'dff-site.
And, again, from the exit to the protected areaihe 13 contacted J.
B. Baird, the NRC resident inspector.
- Again, 14 there's no way we can keep anybody from talking to the NRC if 15 they want to.
Everybody knows J. B.'s phone numb *er.
They 16 know how to contact him.
He'd been there for about.. three 17 months -- two, three months at that point in time.
So, you is know, there was no basis to that charge.
19 Now, subsequent to the individual leaving site, the 20 complainant -- he called back the Health Physics supervisor 21 from home, ostensively, from off-site, and said, Give me your 22 home phone number; you should be expecting some calls tonight.
23 Well -- okay, the HP supervisor, obviously, was pretty upset 24 about this.
I mean, the guy, in his perception, had just 25 threatened him.
You're going to be getting some calls
~
'm;gy:n _
nrwmn
.w--__._.-_-
=. = - ww n. -mu eu.
102 1
tonight.
Now, who from?
What was the purpose of these calls?
.2 The HP supervisor had no inclination.
Well, I'll tell you ha 1
3 was scared.
You better believe he was scared.
i 4
When he went home that night he told his wife.and his
~
5 kids, Don't answer the door and don't answer the phone.
6 That's how scared he was.
When the HP supervisor told me 7
about that, I was furious.
ThereL%ma -m.4hematening a
someD8Sf.
I was livid and, I might add, I was scared.
Nogy ' r yo?rea6-in"tfis"' pay.;734 teed in 9
Californ4o wl}eywal';e.,d. led 1stNft9McMs"in.
He 10 g
11 didn't get the promotion he wanted.
He got let go instead of l
12 somebody else.
He kills his coworkers; he kills his g
13 supervisor.
I mean, this stuff happens.
My perception arid" j
14 the supervisor's perception was the complainant had threatened 15 the Health Physics supervisor; and if he was going to go after 16 him, I knew who was next on the list'and that was me, because 17 I made this decision.
l 18 SenasbetM0$WMWiede*MYligfttt9*-*ttellc4 JheUsway wife 19 an&hh# ~
-6 of mone E and I said,.Get.eut e het%.
2.
20 Hheasbopping, go to the show, go out for 21 dinf$tt"E"99ff*E"9RFe where you go, but go out, have a good 22 time, and stay out late, because I didn't want my family to be Okay, that,was.+ " i = t,,,that thi,s. guy's 23 involved in this.
?
thrsII 4
had on us.
24 25 DONALD W.
WAREMBOURG:
Recognize that during this
)
~ MA.., _ ; _ ' ~ ~ ' ' ~ ' '
L'~
'" 5._ZZZ.1_.... - -.
103 1
same period of time that we pulled his access to the site, and
.2 we pulled his access under Part 73, in terms of our training l
3 for accurate behavior.
We would not allow him to come back on 4
site as a badged individual with these kinds of reactions.
5 And so we permanently pulled his access at that time.
6 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
I called Chuck and I said, 7
Listen, Chuck, this is what's going on with this guy, and I really think we need to release this individual immediately.
a 9
I said, Because I'm scared, I'm concerned.
I don't know what 10 this guy is going'to do to re.
And this was before the threat 11 came in to the HP supervisor.
That was something on top of 12 all this; but even with just the reaction of this individual 13 at the time he was informed, I was really concerned about this 14 guy's emotional status.
And what was he going to do?
And i
is things weren't out of the question like sabotage or hurting 16 other people or, at the very least with this kind of an 17 attitude, he was not going to be a productive member of the 18 work force, certainly at a minimum.
19 So when I talked to Chuck that day, I said, Chuck, my 20 recommendation was to let this individual go immediately.
21 We've given him three weeks' notice but I think we ought to 22 rescind that.
Well, Chuck indicated that he understood my position and that he wanted to defer judgment on that 23 particular decision until the next morning when he had a 24 25 chance to come in, sleep on it, spend the night, and see if I
. _ _, _. _ s.. _... m m _.__ w a _ a _.
104 1
the attitude of the complainant had changed and improved 2
overnight on the 22nd.
1 3
Now, when I came in on the 22nd, the first thing I 4
did was go to see the HP supervisor and make sure he's okay, 5
that he had shown up and nothing had happened to him and, j
6 thank goodness, he was okay.
Chuck's first act when he came 7
into the plant that morning was to find the complainant.
- And, 8
Chuck, maybe I'll just turn it over to you and let you 9
describe that.
10
-CHARLES H.
FULLER:
I walked into the plant right 11 about a quarter to 7:00, as I recall.
I normally get there 12 between 6:30 and 7:00 o' clock in the morning.
My parking spot 13 was right next to the Search and I.D.
facility; and as I 14 approached the Search and I.D.
facility, I observed a person
~
15 in there, who at this time I can name -- identify the name, 16 George McTiernan, with the individual involved.
That was the 17 first time I could do that.
18 And,,tAis4persop,was standing there at the search and 19 I.D.,,fp ilith^"taide the gate where everybody.that goes 20 inside.the facility has to pass that, and he was intimidating 21 everybody.that went into that gate.
He was not physically accosting, but verbally accosting about how Public Service 22 Company couldn't do this, how he was going to get them, how it 23 24 was' unfair that he couldn't have access into the facility.
He 25 was arrogant, accusatory, completely irrational.
I mean,
.LGGw si l ].5IL'D-M aX wm 105 completely irrational, off-the-handle.
This guy was not 1
.2 stable.
~
Now, he saw -- and I'm very observant of this as I'm 3
4 walking towards the Search and I.D.
facility.
And there were probably two or three people that have no choice but to walk 5
6 right on by him.
And then he saw me and he shut up.
7 Absolutely, instantaneously shut up.
Now, I'm trying to figure out what's going on here.
I had not -- it wasn't until l
a l
that instant that I could tie the name George McTiernan with 9
1 the face'that I saw right there, but there was no doubt in my 10 l
mind who that person was at that point in time.
11 12 And I had a decision:
I could either talk to him or f
I I could go inside and find out what was going on, if anythidg
(
13 l
14 else had developed.
Because now, all of a sudden, Ted's phone 15 call the previous night made sense to me.
He was.ccared for his family and he~was scared for his sup6iviesz*s fastly.
16 17 So I made the decision to walk inside to the main g
i is plant, as opposed to stand there at the gate; and as soon as I got past the turnstile so that I could not get back to him, he 19 20 started it again.
And people that were coming in the gate, he 21 was doing the same thing:
ranting and raving, irrational, loud, vocal, abusive, and claiming very loudly that the reason 22 he was being terminated -- the reason he was being terminated 23 was'because he brought up a safety issue and we would not 24 15 permit him to talk to the NRC.
Well, that's not a real good i
W 2
c ^
---~n----=-----~~
i 106 1
thing for a station manager to hear personally, given that 2
that was the first time I had heard anything about not talking 3
to the NRC.
We didn't have that reputation up there.
We 4
didn't have that intimidating-type behavior.
5 So I immediately proceeded up to Ted's office.
I 6
said, I think I know who that person is down there at the 7
gate.
What is going on here?
He's claiming that we will not 8
let him talk to the NRC.
He's claiming that we're letting him 9
go because of a safety violation.
What's the situation here, 10 Ted?
And Ted didn't any -- much new information other than, 11 you know, it had only been the day before.
But I said, I told 12 Ted, I want him to go over there to talk to J. B.
I want him to be escorted over there on-site because now he didn't hav'e 13 14 his badge.
And as soon as that cot 'rersation had taken place 15 in private between J. B. and George McTiernan, I wantea him 16 off-site and released.
17 Now, at that point was when Ted reminded me that we'd is given him the three weeks' notice.
Should we release him 19 immediately?
Yeah, you bet.
No doubt about it because 20 whet)emeJerhadverjob or not, he wasn't getting back on that wesecder 21 site.
So, yeah, I had a flavor for it.
i l
i 22 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
And, again, these are the things 23 that Chuck and I talked about, the threats on March 21st.
Our 24 concern was whether this guy was fit for duty, whether he was 25 liable to engage in some kind of sabotage activity.
Was he j
i l
...m,-
...._-.m_._.......m
-~-
-,_m._=w,wwm=
mmnac.2 107 1
going to try and hurt people on the plant?
And certainly at a minimum he'd already proven that he was disruptive to the work
.2 3
force.
4 I mean, everybody that came in the plant that day was 5
not going to their job and starting off on their assignment 6
with a good day.
They were sitting around the coffee pot 7
saying, What's the deal with this guy?
What's going on here?
8 You know, etc., etc.
So we had already witnessed that that 9
was occurring.
And, certainly, this individual was not going to be productive for the next two to three weeks, and that's to 11 why we made that decision on March 22nd.
12 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
Jim, could I make a statement off 13 the record?
14 JAMES L.' MILHOAN:
Okay.
If it's part of the 15 Enforcement Conference, it has to be on the recoril, because 16 we'd have to have any deliberations on the record for the 17 Enforcement Conference.
18 FREDERICK J. BORST:
I think we left off where the 19.
decision was made on March 22nd that the complainant was going 20 to be released immediately based on some perceived threats 21 that'had been received on March 21 and concerns about the complainant's fitness for duty, possibility for sabotage, and, 22 certainly, he'd already proven to be a disruption on part of 23 24 the' productivity of the work force.
25 Now, I want to talk a little bit about the management
i 108
-1 evaluation that we did of the QA investigation that was
,2
. performed, starting on March 14; and, as you'll recall, on 3
March'21st the complainant had indicated to the HP supervisor l
thathe-wasbeingreleasedbhcausehehad.talkedtoQA.
- Well, 4
5-the supervisor had no idea what he was talking about at this-
)
6 point in time.
And we didn't have a chance between the 21st j
7 and the 22nd to research this because of the other activities l
a that were going on, but after that we sat down and we looked.
i
+
9 at that situation to see what really happened there.
10 Certainly the thing kicked off'on March 14, and a QA-11 inspector initiated a conversation with the complainant on,the 12 refuel for -- about some schedule impacts that he seemed:to be i
13 noticing and some frustration that the complainant was feeling 14 on March leth on the refuel floor.
Well, based'on the concern
{
i 15 that there might have been a schedule delay, QA initiated' 16 their investigation on that day, on March 14th.
t I
17 On March 14th the Health Physics supervisor and I t
is were out of town.
In fact, we were down here in Texas at the 19 south Texas project because it had been recommended to us that 20 they had a strong Health Physics program and we should look at l
t e
21 their program to incorporate some lessons learned in trying to 22 improve our program.
So Bill and I spent the weekend down f
13 here in Texas looking at the south Texas project for 24 improvements in our program.
15 The acting supervisor was informed on March 14th that i
i
. m._
~.
109 1
QA had initiated an investigation of possible schedule delay 2
on the refuel floor, and the QA inspector and the HP -- acting 3
HP supervisor discussed the situation.
At that time the 4
assistant or the acting HP tech came to the conclusion, based 5
on the facts, that there was no safety issue.
There might 6
have been a schedule delay, but there was no safety issue; and 7
the QA investigation proceeded along those lines.
8 In fact, that same day the QA investigator came to 9
that same conclusion and talked to his management about it and to said, This does not appear to be a schedule -- or a safety 11 issue to ne.
It looks like a schedule delay issue, and I'm 12 going to go ahead and look at it.
And at that po' int in time 13 the individual supervisor also tended to agree that this was a 14 schedule impact, but not a safety issue.
15 Now, Bill and I returned to the site on the 18th --
16 Bill Woodard and I, who is the HP supervisor.
The QA 17 investigator at that time sat down with him and discussed the 18 situation with him.- At that time Bill Woodard also came to 19 the conclusion that this was not a safety issue.
Now, one of 20 the things that was brought up, initially, by Mr. Milhoan was 21 the fact that Mr. McTiernan had been released three days after M
we were aware that Mr. McTiernan had a discussion with QA.
23 Well, we were not aware of that; not until the 21st when 24 Mr. McTiernan told us.
Because at the meeting on the 18th the 25 QA investigator mentioned no names.
110 1
A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
In fact, Ted knew about it on the
.2 21st.
Chuck didn't know about it until the 22nd when he heard 3
him spouting it out 1"n front.
4 FREDERICK J. BORST:
QA investigators simply talked 5
about the issues, but no names were nentioned.
And the HP 6
supervisor did not pursue that to find out who was involved 7
because it was not a safety issue.
It appeared to be a a
schedule or delay issue.
Certainly Health Physics is 9
concerned about schedule.
We don't like delaying schedules 10 unnecessarily.
However, if it boils down to a question about 11 safety issue versus schedule, the schedule's going to go out 12 the window every time, I'll tell you that.
So we were in a position where the supervisor had '
13 14 been informed that there was an investigation of a schedule 15 delay.
HP supervisor determined there was no safety issue; no 16 names were mentioned.
So there was no way for us to know f
l 17 who's involved in that and, again, we didn't pursue it because j
18 it was not a safety issue and simply involves some schedule i
19 delays.
20 GARY SANBORN:
Ted, without really commenting on your 21 arguments here, I just want to point out that a safety issue 22 doesn't have to be involved in order for an individual to be 23 engaging in a protected activity.
I just wanted to get that 24 on the record.
15 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Okay, sure.
Thank you.
And I
111 1
guess, again, the point is we ha \\no idea this individual was 2
even involved; not until he informed the HP supervisor on the 3
21st.
1 4
BILL BROWN:
You were tai' king about talking to the QA 5
people, right?
6 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Right.
7 BILL BROWN:
But, of course, you obviously knew about a
the wipes issue and his complaints about that?
9 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Right.
That was a separate 10 issue.
11 Now, when all was said and done, and based on the 12 documentation that was provided by various groups, the 13 fact -- and recognizing it doesn't have a bearing ca the protected activity question; but it was confirmed that there 14 was no safety issue by the complainant, by the QA' inspector is and his management, by the NRC senior resident inspector, and 16 the 17 by, basically, the HP group -- management group, 18 supervisor and myself.
19 Okay.
Just by way of a brief summary, I spent some 20 amount of time going through some of the conditions that 21 existed in the department in the late 1990, early 1991 time 22 frame.
Some of the concerns that existed:
lack of teamwork 23 issues, backbiting, harassment, issues that were going on out 24 there; my agenda, in terms of what I was trying to accomplish with the department and some specific initiatives that I had l
25
- ....-.~ --~....
~
~
112 l
1 implemented.
-2 The reason that we had to destaff, which was the kind 3
of uncertainty around whether we were going to be able to ship 4
fuel or not and the decision making that culminated in the 5
March 4th release list that the complainant was not on.
6 Spent, again, some period of time talking about what 7
changed between March 4th and March 8th which led to the j
8 individual being placed on the release list on March 8th.
j 9
And talked about the individual's response when he 10 was informed on March 21st that he was going to be released 11 and those things that led to his immediate release on the 12 22nd.
13 And I also talked about the QA investigation of the 14 schedule delay.
15 Now, let me move on to some of the follo'w-up actions 16 and things that occurred after the complainant left, starting 17 with a Vice President all-employee meeting that happened on 18 March 28th, 1991.
Now, this was part of a regularly scheduled 19 series of meetings that Clegg had of the plant staff; tried to 20 do them about quarterly, to sit down and talk to the staff 21 about concerns that they might have, about the status of 22 shipping, review the destaffing plan with them, any changes to 23 schedule, a chance for him to see whether there are any 24 concerns on the part of the plant staff.
15 So this thing was not specifically scheduled, and the
113 1
only reason that it shows up anywhere in this time frame is
.2 just by coincidence.
This thing was scheduled, probably, in 3
the January or maybe December time frame, because Clegg's i
4 schedule is a mess.
5 So this meeting was scheduled on March 28th.
Clegg 6
proceeded to talk to the staff about what was happening; and 7
at that meeting, one of the Public Service company Health a
Physics technicians asked a hard question.
And that question 9
was, tell me about the release of the complainant.
Was 10 Mr. McTiernan released becetre he raised safety concerns?
And 11 do I have to worry about being released if I raise safety 12 concerns?
That's a pretty tough question and Clegg fielded 13 it; and Clegg went through exactly what we talked here.
14 Clegg talked about the basis for their release.
No, is it had nothing to do with raising safety issues. 'Everybody 16 has a right and responsibility to raise issues.
We have an 17 open-door participative management style.
We want you to la raise issues and we'll take care of them.
19 And I think by virtue of the fact that that question 20 was asked by itself indicates that for that individual there 21 was no " chilling effect," no hesitancy to raise questions 22 about safety icsues because he raised the very essence of the 23 question, Am I going to be in trouble if I raise a safety 24 concern?
25 BILL BROWN:
But you're not saying that the safety
7
~
114 1
issues have to necessarily be legitimate safety issues, are m
2 you?
3 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
No.
4 BILL BROWN:
Because, obviously, an individual can 5
raise an illegitimate safety issue that he may just simply 6
perceive as a safety issue.
7 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Sure.
8 BILL BROWN:
Because if everyone could only come 9
forward at their own peril, you would not get many people to lo come forward.
11 FREDERICK J.
BORST.
Right.
And that was a question 12 that was asked:
Will I be at my own peril if I bring forth a 13 perceived safety concern, and the answer to that was no.
14 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
That's the same argument you 15 could also make about the sexual harassment, exac'tly just like 16 you stated.
17 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Now, based on the response to la the complainant when he left, the concerns about him not being 19 able to get with the NRC and being released because of 20 concerns raised at QA and because of the question that came up 21 at the VP meeting on the 28th, we felt like it was important 22 for us to sit down with J.
B. Baird, who's the NRC senior 23 resident inspector and talk through some of these issues with 24 him.
So Chuck and I did that.
25 We met with him on the 29th, and we also met with him m.
115 1
on the 2nd to talk about our perception, of whether the 2
" chilling effect" had been established.
We talked a little
-s 3
bit about some of our follow-up actions that we had planned or 4
had already taken.
5 Now, in tatween that on April 1st I also sat down 6
with my staff at the morning turnover meeting and I got the 7
issue of the day in this case.
I took the issue and the issue a
was, What's going to happen if you raise safety concerns, 9
perceived safety concerns?
Does that put you at peril?
And I 10 made clear to them in no uncertain terms that, No, it does j
1 11 not.
In fact, if anybody, Radiation Protection has a unique 12 responsibility to raise perceived safety concerns because, 13 again, they are the safety net.
If they don't feel free to" 14 raise safety issues, then I'm not sure who can feel safe.
15 So, again, I reminded them of their special right and 16 responsibility, and I also indicated to them if there's 77 anybody here that does not feel like they can raise safety 18 issues, perceived ;;fety issues without fair reprisal, that 19 thJt informat ion needs to get to somebody:
to J. B. Baird, to 20 QA, to Chucx Fuller, to Clegg Crawford; and you can't come to 21 me because maybe I'm part of the problem.
But if you really 22 feel that way, you've got to gat to somebody and you've got to 23 let them know.
And to my knowledge, nobody ever did that.
24 Also, on April 1st I invited the QA inspector.
He 25 met with the HP staff and talked with them, again, of the
116 1
investigation that he had performed and indicated that he was 2
the one that initiated that; the HP tech was not.
The 3
initiator talked a little bit about the investigation and his 4
findings.
And the findings of the investigation were that all 5
of the elements of the HP and ROR programs were being 6
effectively implemented.
7 Finally, on April 18th, Clegg sent out a " chilling a
effect" memo to all plant employees, and I know you've got a 9
copy of that in your package.
10 CHARLES H. FULLER:
There's also a follow-up action 11 here that had to be in the late March, early April time frame.
12 I think it's probably in the information that we have sent to 13 you with the exact date.
But that was my personal 14 investigation of this assertion of the QA event that I had 15 just heard about on the 22nd of March.
16 For I met with the QA inspector who was involved in 17 that, and it was a very lengthy conversation between he and la myself.
It started out as a verbal discussion, and after 19 about 45 minutes of that, I said, can we start over again?
20 Because some of the things that you're saying are a 180 out 21 with what I understand that Mr. McTiernan is saying, and I 22 taped that conversation.
23 Unfortunately, I don't have the tape anymore, but I P
24 had such a level of concern based on what he was telling 25 me -- the QA inspector was telling me -- versus what I had
n...;. --
a..._ _ m. m._..
_s m_ _
117 1
understood Mr. McTiernan was saying,.and my observation on the 2
22nd, as I came into the plant, about the refusal to allow
-s 3
discussion with the NRC inspector and the release because of 4
bringing the attention to QA and the safety concern.
And 5
.that's what was said on the 22nd by Mr. McTiernan.
h 4
6 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
I'll talk a little bit about 7
some of the formal complaint mechanisms that I established in a
the Radiation Protection department to ensure that management 9
was receptive in following up on issues as they were 10 identified.
And I wanted to put together kind of a chart that 11 indicated the kinds of complaint mechanisms that we had in 12 place and continue to have in place to make sure that 13 employees have somewhere to raise issues.
14 First of all, I mentioned the HP issues list, the 15 issue of the day at the HP turnover meeting, and the open-door policy that I established in the Radiation 16 l
17 Protection department.
18 At Fort St. Vrain, in general, there's an instrument 19 called the Standards Infraction Report, SIR, primarily meant to deal with concerns that people have in the industrial 20 l
21 safety or housekeeping area.
Is there water on the floor?
1 22 Are there open conduits?
Those kinds of things.
Anybody can 23 fill one of these out.
They get processed through the Safety 24 Committee for resolution.
25 The next kind of category we have is Radiological i
)
1 u_
318 1
Occurrence Reports.
These, as the name would imply, are 2
typically used to document concerns with the implementation of 3
the Radiation Protection program.
Again, anyone can implement 4
one these.
We have had a few of these implemented or s
initiated since we started decommissioning.
These programs 6
were both in place during the time frame in which the 7
complainant was released, so those are not new.
8 GARY SANBORN:
Were these used -- I guess, 9
particularly, the Radiological Occurrence Reports.
Were they 10 used in the events leading up to the disciplinary action 11 against Marna Porter in the 1990 time frame?
12 CHARLES H.
FULLER:
1990 time frame, yes.
13 FREDERICK J. BORST:
You know, I'm ninety-nine and' 14 forty-four one hundredths percent sure that a Radiological 15 Occurrence Report would have been initiated for that event 16 because it involved a breakdown in the program and not in 17 compliance with the program.
And, typically, that's what they 18 were used for was situations where we thought the program was 19 not being complied with.
20 When we started decommissioning, we implemented 21 something called a Problem Report, and on this page this is 22 really the new piece that wasn't in place at the time the 23 complainant was released.
A Problem Report, which is designed to be used by anyone on the PSC or the Westinghouse Team side 24 is if they have a concern with, basically, anything.
If they
_.m - _-.-
119 1
don't like the way the work's going, if they've got concerns 2
about safety, industrial safety, radiological safety,
^
3 compliance with procedures, just generally the way we're doing 4
business.
So that's available.
5 These things are processed through the QA organizations and both Public Service Company and 6
7 Westinghouse.
So they get a management review from that a
standpoint.
9 And the QA monitorings.
We talked about the fact --
and you've got in your packet several of those that were done 10 11 during thic period of time.
In fact, the QA inspector 12 initiated one of these to specifically lock at the schedule 13 delay on the refuel floor based on the March 14th event.
14 From a corporate standpoint, there are programs in place for both bargaining unit and non-bargaining
- unit in is 16 terms of a grievance procedure or a problem review.
- And, 17 again, these corporate programs have been in place since is before the complainant was released.
19 And believe it or not, I think that's about all I 20 have.
Okay.
Are there any further questions for me?
21 BILL BROWN:
I assume from what you've said that you do agree that he was engaged in protected activity, at least 22 23 in so far as the swipes issue went, even though you felt it 24 was an illegitimate issue on his part.
25 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
The definition of that, I guess,
120 l
1 is still it's one that's not totally clear to me.
For
.2 example, you know, if I have concerns with the way that
^
3 somebody's doing business and in a typical manner, again, you 1
4 know, I would approach that individual and say, Listen, I 5
think this needs to be done this way as opposed to that way.
6 You know, my perception on that is I'm not necessarily -- I'm 7
not consciously engaging in a protected activity.
I'm trying a
to change behaviors.
9 Now, yet, according to the strict interpretation of j
10 50.7, that could be the case.
But, you know, typically, I 11 think most of us, you know, we're doing with other people and 12 talking about behavior that we'd like to get changed.
We're 13 not really thinking about, Is this a protected activity?
4 14 And the analogy that I brought up, you know, if I go 15 over to clegg today and say, Listen, clegg, you know, I'm kind i
16 of concerned about the way that Don's doing business in 17 Nuclear Operations, and I think we ought to look at that; am I 18 a protected individual if I just engaged in a protected 19 activity?
That's hard for me to really make a decision on that.
20 21 I mean, I'm not doing it and I'm not going to Clegg because 22 once I say that to Clegg, then he can never release me.
You 23 know, I'm doing that because I've got a concern about maybe 24 the way we're doing business.
j 25 BILL BROWN:
Well, you -- obviously, DOL initially
121 1
found against you and then you chose to settle.
You feel at
-~
. 2 liberty to discuss why you settled that case?
3 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Salie?
4 SALIE O'MALLEY:
If you'd like to discuss why you 5
chose to settle, that's certainly fine with me.
6 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
The reason we settled, 7
frankly -- it's important for you as legal counsel to know a
that I'm in no way criticizing the legal profession.
But we 9
could settle for a very small sum of money -- very, very small 10
-- and it was better than thinking of having.to_go on.With a 11 bunch of -lawyers, arguing over a long period of time.
And
~
12 that was exactly why we settled.
13 CHARLES L. FULLER:
Add the impact on the rest of"the 14 organization.
15 BILL BROWN:
One of our concerns was the' fact that 16 you were unwilling to state what the sum of money was, and 17 that gave us an uneasy feeling.
And we suggested -- and Salle la may correct me Lf I'm wrong -- that you get Mr. McTiernan's 19 permission to convey that information.
You did give us a copy 20 of -- a redacted copy of the settlement agreement, but it did 21 not h' ave a settlement figure in there.
You feel at liberty at
~
22 this point to state what that figure is?
23 SALIE O'KALLEY:
I think I'd like to just address the 24 first part of that.
We, the company, insisted on the is confidentiality; and the primary purpose of the 9e
.-..._.:-.n.
'.. -~
~
l 122 1
confidentiality request was, as Chuck described, that at the 2
time -- the fact of settlement -- we didn't want it to look 3
like that we were admitting some violation, because at the 4
same time they're trying to now convince the forces that this 5
is not why this fallow was terminated, that it was for other 6
reasons.
7 However, then we come out with a settlement, and it a
looks like we're buying Mr. McTiernan off and, yes, all he 9
says is true but we're just trying to get rid of him.
Keeping 10 the settlement amount redacted, at least kept in some control 11 that -- well, how could I say this?
Kept it within some of n
our control that we weren't trying to buy him off.
In other 13 words, it could have been a very small amount, or it could 14 have been a very'large amount; but we just didn't want that to 15 be published and to --
16 BILL BROWN:
Well, see, we had those same concerns:
1 17 the buying involved type concern; and, naturally, when we 18 didn't get a figure, you know, you can imagine what went 19 through our minds.
20 SALIE O'MALLEY:
As I understand it as the well, the 21 Department of Labor Secretary did not agree to keep that 22 redacted agreement confidential, and I'm not sure what they 23 actually did with it; but we requested confidentiality.
The 24 Secretary of Labor said, I need to see what the amount is 25 before I can approve this.
We did provide that amount to him, i
l I
l i
m.
123 1
and he agreed that it was appropriate to settle the case.
But he did not represent to me that he would keep that 2
^
3 confidential.
At least, he said he would try, but he didn't say that it was going to be kept confidential.
So I don't 4
5 know what more access is to that.
6 BILL BROWN:
Well, with all due respect, they're --
7 what they're interested in is different than what we are a
interested in.
They're interested in making the individual 9
whole; we're interested in public health and safety.
And, you 10 know, it'is different.
11 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
One of the things -- and I'll say this again and I understand exactly what you just said, sir.
12 13 I really do.
I.JGERSirgieqt;$e4aow that; evgry,,t4pstM have had a 14 deviation and. we/we.come tRWn herer,' eithef'in'ap Unforcement Conference'or in some'oth'er case, we have admitted Eur guilt.
~
is So I want you to know that we are not in the position to 16 17 continually fight.
That.is not.our position.
We truly, truly do not believe that we terminated this individual because of is 19 5,0,.,7mWe:deugebbelieve that we're, in any way, muzzling.
We 20 wouW'tfiVdfftim any opportunity to see J. B. Baird and we 21 truipt9Writr7t('tKat.
I am not unfamiliar with the whistle-blowing 22 23 statutes.
I was involved as General Manager of Rockwall 24 Hanford of losing a one billion dollar-a-year contract over 25 whistle-blowing.
So I want you to know that I am --
124 1
$1 billion a year is a fairly substantial contract; and I have 2
felt the pain of this process before, although in that
-s i
3 particular case we thought we had nothing either.
But the 4
press roasted us alive.
5 So my point being not whether I was guilty or not 6
guilty.
My point being that I am sensitized to a significant 7
degree to these statutes, and we truly did not, nor do we now l
a believe that we've violated -- now, of course, you people have 9
to make your decision.
We understand that.
And, frankly, we 10 understand exactly what you're doing.
And"that's all.r{ght 11 with us that you do that, because I think it's the proper way 12 to take and make sure that everything is equitable.
But we..truly do not believe that we've violated th"at 13 14 50.7 aa a result of this, and we're not just doing this to 15 make a point.
We're doing it because of this particular case, 16 vis-a-vis.
In all of the other cases that we've had 17 discussions, this is the only one that we have come down and 18 said we're not guilty.
/
19 GARY SANBORN:
Mr. Crawford, was 50.7 part of your 20 routine training for supervisors and managers?
21 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
I cannot tell you that.
I would 22 have to that over to Don.
And my reason for it, I came to 23 Fort St. Vrain.
As you know, I was hired at Fort St. Vrain to 24 decommission it; and at that point in time I cannot tell you 25 what the supervision was that w.es in place, training was.
125 1
Certainly, 50.7 was part of my training, but I would not say 2
that it was part of my supervisory training.
It was part of
-s 3
my training as you grew in business.
And, Don, can you 4
respond to that?
5 DONALD W. WAREMBOURG:
Well, I don't know that we had 6
specific training under the guise of 50.7 and say this is 50.7 7
training.
Certainly, in terms of our stop-work authority and a
the ability of people to report safety events and those kinds 9
of things was very clearly a part of management training of to Fort St.-Vrain staff.
So I wouldn't say that, Yeah, I'm going 11 to class today to learn about 50.7.
No, that probably did not 12 happen.
13 CHARLES H.
FULLER:
You do need to keep in mind, however, in the union contract -- ttfM ' specific provisions 14 15 in the union contract that protect bargaining unit people for 16 raising safety issues and not having any repercussions as a 17 result of doing that.
So in that context and in this is particular instance, the HP supervisor does have the I
19 bargaining unit people and he had received that type of i
20 training.
21 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
And a piece of data that this j
22 fifty cents will buy you a cup of coffee in a cheap 23 restaurant.
But I was the one who initiated the stop-work 24 authority.
I've done that at three other locations across the 25 country.
I have only had one person take advantage of it.
126 i
The rest of Public Service Company management were absolutely convinced that I had gone around the bend, and now Public 2
3 Service Company has initiated across-the-board in every one of 4
our facilities, all of our fossil plants, all of our hydro 5
plants.
All of our distribution have stop-work authority.
6 And that was a published policy by me in the first six months 7
I was at Fort St. Vrain.
s I truly believe that stop-work authority was the 9
right of each and every employee; they should not be required to to do something that's unsafe, and they had the right to stop 11 it; and we had a formal escalation process to take and resolve 12 it.
I think that's, also, an indicator of where we were 13 coming from.
14 GARY SANBORN:
You talked about these complaint 15 mechanisms, Ted.
I guess I just have a question about that.
16 Can you point to any individuals who utilized these complaint 17 mechanisms over and over and over again and still there, 18 having not been the subject of any employment action, 19 whatsoever?
20 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Yeah, actually -- and, I guess, 21 a reetgood ewersple is the person that took the complainant's 22 place on the release list.
If there was ever a person that 23 was good at bringing up issues and concerns, he was the guy.
24 He, certainly, brought up more issues and concerns and 25 complaint I never thought about prior to me making the
-2:--.._.w-.
~......
. - -. ~
127 1
decision to keep him.
You might be interested to know he's 2
still there; he's employed by the contractor doing the 3
decommissioning.
4 In fact, he just qst an award from the OLAR Committee 5
for his asking hard questions and bringing up these kind of 6
concerns in 1992 to the end of reducing the plant exposure.
7 So, yeah, he's the guy I would point to instantly.
There were a
several, for example, Radiological Occurrence Reports that 9
were initiated by this individual, because he was not happy 10 with the way we were doing business, wanted that documented, 11 and wanted a search for a good solution.
12 GARY SANBORN:
Several even prior to yodr decision to 13 retain him?
14 FREDERiLK J. BORST:
Um-hum.
15 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
I can give you a specific example 16 that is no longer there, but I can explain that, also.
And the only person here in the room that was there when this 17 18 happened was Chuck.
Our chief steward of our operators, a gentleman by the name of Emil Sheron, had a meeting -- we had 19 a meeting with the union's stewards and Emil Sheron was its 20 21 spokesman.
Chuck was there.
And I think -- I think I'm very close to saying that he called me a lying son of a bitch.
And 22 23 the conversation went on for about three hours.
24 Emil Sheron turned out to be one of our best 25 employees.
I just wrote a letter of reference to him that I
~ --
p _
128 1
can take and share with you.
He was a tremendous asset to us 2
in every single sense of the word, and we were able to take 3
and resolve those differences; but it was the first meeting.
4 It was absolutely a knock-down-drag-out.
I mean, we were 5
nose-to-nose at about 120 db conversing.
6 And he stayed until, finally, we limited the 7
operators; and he would have had to go all the way back in the a
Public Service Company and start over again, because even 1
9 though we're licensed nuclear operators, they couldn't go back I
to into a fossil plant and start at the top.
They had to start 11 at the bottom.
He chose not to do that and so he took the one 12 year's severance and I wrote him a letter of reference.
13 There's another example of really hot communications end Chuck 14 was there and I think Chuck will verify that they were hot.
15 CHARLES H. FULLER:
It was warm, that's for sure.
16 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
Let me ask you a question and I'll 17 do it, sort of, by playing the devil's advocate here.
What if la I were to say that it's okay at Fort St. Vrain or was okay 19 back in th,qt, time frame, early '91, to raise safety concerns,
. s-a.
20 as long.as they were impersonal programmatic concerns, but woe z.
21 to the contract technician who raise safety concerns that 22 raise competence questions about a PSC technician?
23 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
I would disagree with you.
I 24 would say that's not the case.
I'd say this was not the fact 25 that he raised competence of an individual.
It was the fact
= - '
w== : a =.,
. ~.. -.. - - - -
't' 129 1
that the person refused to take and be a part of the' team.
- 2 And where we were at, teamwork was almost all-important.
5 3
If we didn't have. teamwork, we didn't have safety, i
'i 4
If we didn't have people communicating openly and honestly, s
our whole process broke down, because they were already working.themselves out of a job and' going to be laid off'in
]
6 7
the near term.
It was absolutely paramount we had open'and a
honest communications.
9 In fact, we had -- if you look at our Service l
i F
l 10 Excellence Process, which, if you will, is our TQM process.
11 The Service Excellence Process that we worked on the entire 12 time was first, communications.
Now, we can show you.the-l 13 documentation on that, communications..And that second after N
14 communications was trust.
We had to take and have trust.
9 r
15 And that's what we were working on across the. board,
-16 to take and maintain the morale, which was in such a q
r 17 sensitive, tender area because of the situation we found la ourselves in.
And so I would disagree with that, and I would i
19 even reemphasize that we truly cherished open and honest i
20 communications --
j i
21 L. JOSEPH-CALLAN:
Even if those --
22 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
Even the contractors.
3 23 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
Even if those issues raised 24 embarrassing questions about an individual's competence?
.j 25 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
Hell, when he called me a lying
)
u
~.
130 1
son of a bitch, I would say to you that that was dealing with 2
my competence.
And I will tell you that we were able to
-s 3
communicate it out.
The answer is, We do not agree that we 4
were dealing with -- if competence was an issue, we wanted to 5
pursue it and find out what the situation was and to correct 6'
it, not to take it and push it under the rug.
7 L. JOSEPH CALLAN:
But.you_said that, given a e
disagreement, you side with PSC, just default to PSC.
That 9
shows up in the written statements and you made it up here.
10 If you're a contract tech knowing that, seeing evidence of 11 that in this case, wouldn't that have a " chilling effect" on 12 your willingness to challenge a PSC technician's actions?
13 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Well, it certainly didn't in the 14 Health Physics department in that time frame.
- Again, is recognize that most of these issues that came up on this list 16 and the issues that came up at the morning meetings were 17 brought up by contractors, and they questioned the way that we is were doing business.
In most cases, again, had that added 19 component that, Hey, I'm interested in a solution and here is 20 somefaing we can do to make things better.
So certainly there 21 was no " chilling effect" in the raising of issues in the 22 department.
23 CHARLES H. FULLER:
At the time, really, in the HP 24 department there were five Public Service Company HPs and, 25 like, on the order of fourteen or so contract Health Physics
-~
131 1
technicians; and, certainly, not -- these issues weren't all 2
generated by the PSC.
They were generated by, primarily,
-s 3
contract employees and questioning our programs and 4
questioning the way that we did business and, in some cases, 5
questioning the competence of HP techs or management staff or 6
a number --
7 FREDERICK J. BORST:
And, of course, it's a shared a
thing.
I mean, if somebody's going to come in and say, 9
Listen, I'm not sure I like the way you're doing business, lo you've got to be able to sit back and look at that objectively 11 and see if there really is a better way for you to do your 12 job.
So it's not just a one-way street.
Both individuals in that interaction have to be willing to give and take and ac't 13 14 together for a shared solution.
15 A.
CLEGG CRAWFORD:
Let me add one thing'there that 16 what we're talking about now is not Ted Borst's M.O.
I've 17 known him now four years.
He really,does have a constant is respect for people.
He really does have uncompromising 19 rhetoric.
In fact, Ted will tell you, when he was a direct 20 report to me, my main criticism of Ted was he wasn't tough 21 anough.
He really has always dealt with all people, 22 contractor and everybody else, in an equitable manner.
That's 23 his M.O.
That's who Ted Borst is.
He's a kind, gentle man.
24 He would not deliberately take and pick on anybody, because 25 that is who he is as a person.
Sometimes I would like him to
)
~
.n 132 1
grow fangs.
2 DEIRDRE SPAULDING:
Excuse me.
So what I'm hearing 3
you say is that, unequivocally, you can say that PSC has provided an environment where employees have always felt free 4
to come forward, voice any issue, and that that issue would be 5
6 addressed?
7 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
I think that's true based on my 8
experience.
9 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
And I would say, unequivocally, 10 that's exactly what we try to do.
That's exactly what we try 11 to do.
12 DONALD W. WAREMBOURG:
Let me clarify that.
It may not have been always addressed to their satisfaction.
It 13 would have been andressed and some of them may well have not 14 been what the employee was happy with, but there kas a is 16 solution to the issue.
It may not have been an amicable 17 solution, but there was a solution.
18 A.
CLEGG CRAWFORD:
And I agree with that caveat.
I can't guarantee you they always agreed with our decision.
19 20 GARY SANBORN:
Can you give us copies of some of these Radiological Occurrence Reports that Mr. McTiernan's 21 replacement may have filed in that same time frame or that 12 others may have filed that led to the development of this 23 24 issues list, so we can judge for ourselves that nature of 25 those types of issues?
n 133 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Sure.
1 2
A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
If you have no objection, I've got two final char'- that I'll go through here.
3 4
JAMES L. MILHOAN:
Well, let us -- I think we're at the point where you're ready to go to your concluding remark?
5 6
A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
That's fine.
7 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
I think -- if that's what I a
understand.
That's correct?
At this point I would like to take about a five-minute recess so staff can adjourn to my 9
office and we'll come back and give you an opportunity to 10 discuss anything among yourselves and then we'll provide you 11 12 that opportunity.
13 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Very good.
Thank you.
(RECESS TAKEN) 14 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
While we reconvene, I'think I have 15 16 one question.
The staff may have some additional questions 17 after that, and I'll certainly give them an opportunity to do la that.
Mr. Borst, what I'd like to do is take you back to the slide on the -- related to the March 8th meeting with the 19 20 complainant.
21 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Okay.
22 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
In that March 8th meeting you j
indicated that the complainant stated he would not change his 23 24 behavior, and that was an important consideration for you.
Would you consider that the overriding consideration in why j
25
134 1
you let the complainant go?
2 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
I guess if I had to look at
^-
3 everything, that probably was one of the more important things 4
that factored into my decision.
In other words, throughout 5
this period I was continuing to hope that, you kner when 6
individuals got together and worked out issues, t' at they'd be 7
able to resolve those isr,ues; and that we'd be able to see a
some give and take in that kind of interpersonal relationship 9
there.
10 Bus at this point in time it looked like -- my 11 perceptior. scs that there was just going to be no give on this 12 individual's part.
And that based on that and the refusal to 13 change, that it was just not going to be a situation that was 14 receptive to teamwork when he was involved.
So, yes, it is certainly was a very important consideration.
16 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
And once again, change what?
17 FREDERICK J.
BORST:
Well, change his way of dealing 1s with other people. 'Again, his style was very sarcastic, and 19 he didn't seem to think that that was a problem even though, 20 obviously, it had created problems within the rest of the 21 staff.
And by virtue of the fact that he was going to 22 continue with that style, indicated to me like there was not 23 much optimism that employee relations within the department 24 were going to improve.
25 BILL BROWN:
But you knew for some time that this was
m-q
- 13i, I
a problem?
-2 an2DERICK J.
BORST:
Well, I knew what his -- and I
^
3 was getting more familiar with his communications style as we 4
went from February into March, but that still doesn't mean 5
that somebody can't change when that's pointed out to them as 6
contributing to a problem in the organization.
And, I guess, 7
that -- back to the point that you made, Mr. M11hoan, is kind j
a of a telling factor.
9 You know, even, as I mentioned, if he would have come to to me at the March 8th meeting and said, Listen, I understand, 11 yes, I'm sarcastic.
g,gginen t.oahet hast forameute.ohanga.
12 that,, ppt,,J't willing to give it a shotw Yo6'know, titehwould 13 havy been one thing.
Who-knows, he might still have been 14 there.
15 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
Following up on that question, was 16 the HP supervisor present at the March 8th meeting?
17 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Yes.
And that meeting is 18 documented.
19 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
Okay.
In that March 8th meeting, 20 following that March 8th meeting, the HP supervisor, even in 21 light of this comment concerning that the complainant stated 22 he would not change his behavior, still would have retained 23 the complainant.
Can you provide an explanation of why that would be the case since he is not here?
24 25 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Again, as I mentioned, the HP
136 supervisor tended to put more weight on technical expertise 3
2 over interpersonal skills; whereas, my inclination is they're
~
l 3
equally weighted, if not maybe even more important on the i
technical side -- or the interpersonal side, rather, to get 4
5 People to work together.
And, again, we're not disputing the 6
fact that he was technically competent, and that's really why 7
the HP supervisor tended to favor keeping complainant was because of those technical skills, which he tended to value a
I more than tho interpersonal skills.
9 10 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
Let me respond to that because I 4
I 11 think that's an important thing, and I think I'm the one 12 that's probably the biggest driver on this.
I have said --
13 and I will say it again.
In my fossil plants we have eleva ed 14 our management based on technical skills.
They have not even is had to pass interpersonal skills.
They have not even had to 16 Pass the leadership modules of our training.
I have l
)
17 completely changed that since I have taken over the plants a is year ago last January.
l I WO8%dwEgther take and have a person with
{
19 outstan @ Jnterpersonal skills and small technical 20 capability than' to have the greatest technician in the world 21 out there leading a plant with no interpersonal skills.
I 22 think leadership is what we need to guarantee safety.
I think 23 leadership is what we need to take to guarantee we don't have 24 harassment.
I think leadership is more important than 25
r-137 1
technical.
If I could have both, I would be ecstatic.
But I think leadership -- and I have driven all of my direct 2
reports, end they understand that's my position.
3 4
CHARLES H. FULLER:
I'd like to make another comment 5
there.
When Ted and I had a conversation on the -- I guess it 6
must have been the 8th of March?
7 FREDERICK J. BORST:
Un-ham.
s CHARLES H. FULLER:
I did ask Ted about -- or Ted informed me -- I don't remember if I asked -- about Bill 5
Woodard's' impression of whether Mr. McTiernan ought to'be to 11 released or not.
And Ted told me that Bill did not want to, l
release George because of his technical skills.
And we haq a u
13 conversation about that.
14 As a matter of fact, I think we might have had that conversation on the evening of the 21st when we got feedback is about what George's reactions were to his release.
- Really, 16 the atmosphere at Fort St. Vrain at the time was going into 17 is the defueling and the decommissioning.
19 But, particularly in the Health Physics staff, it was under a great deal of scrutiny, and we had had some significant events in the Health Physics Radiation Protection 21 We had had some Enforcement Conferences based on 22 program.
23 that.
And, of course, your natural tendency is, is that, yell, these are technical-type problems that require technical 24 25 expertise to resolve.
And George McTiernan's skill is
138 1
technical.
I mean, we never had any reservations about his 2
technical competence at all.
3 So with that kind of a, you know, an environment and 4
continuous scrutiny and me beating up Ted about we've got to 5
get HP turned around, etc., etc., the natural inclination is, 6
I want all the technical expertise I can possibly have, and I 7
can understand why that would be Bill Woodard's desire.
s JAMES L. MILHOAN:
One last question on my part.
Do.
9 you consider it wrong that McTiernan brought up the fact that to there were wipes in the HP cffice?
11 FREDERICK J. BORST:
No, I don't consider it wrong at u
all.
In fact, I think he had an obligation to bring that 13 issue forward.
14 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
Let's ask the staff if they have is any.
Does anybody else have any questions?
Okay', I think 16 we're ready, Mr. Crawford, for your closing.
17 18 CONCLUDING REMARKS 19 20 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
We've talked about all of these u
things, again, but let me just repeat.
We were in a 22 destaffing mode.
Destaffing accomplished under stringent control with pre-existing criteria.
One of the primary 23 criterion was that contract personnel were to be released 24 Prior to permanent PSC personnel whenever possible.
25
139 Destaffing has been essentially and successfully completed under this program without any destaffing complaints other
- 2 2
than this case, other than this case.
There were no safety issues, and I'm talking about 4
5 the QA issue now.
I'll talk about the other one in a moment.
And that was confirmed by complainant, the NRC senior resident 6
7 inspector, PSC QA, PSC QA management, and PSC HP management.
And a point I'd like to make is, is that HP 8
management found out about this issue 13 to 14 days, 9
respectively, for Ted and Chuck, after they'd made the 10 decision te release him.
11 Timing of the release does not support violation 12 10 CFR 50.7 in our opinion.
Decision to release the 13 contractors made on February 22nd did not include the 14 individual in question.
Concerns raised to HP management by is 16 complainant on February 26th.
Again, we did not change our 17 Position.
Release lists published on March 4th.
Again, it did not include complainant.
Decision to release complainant is was made on March 8, and it was made because of all the things 19 we've talked about, which included haressment, which included 20 attitude, which included his not willingness to change, which 21 included his lack of teamwork.
Final release date based on 22 the aberrant behavior of the complainant, and we discussed 23 that in some detail.
24 Conclusions.
PSC will continue to comply with our 25 4
140 license conditions and regulatory requirements.
PSC has g
2 effective and ongoing complaint processes and we believe in 3
it.
We truly do believe in it.
PSC now knows how to more 4
effectively deal with contractor personnel problems.
Dealing with contractor matingcment for resoletion.
We should have 5
done more of that with this individual.
We should have talked 6
to our supervision, documented all contractor complaints to 7
a contractor management.
She should have done that.
- And, finally, PSC did not release the complainant in violation of 9
to 10 CFR 50'.7.
And I want you to know we truly believe that.
11 We're not just doing that to take and make an excuse.
We trulydobelievethatwedidnotviolate50.7forthereasahs 12 e
is we've talked today.
That's our story, ladies and gentlemen.'
JAMES L. MILHOAN:
Thank you very much for your 14 Presentation and your answers to these questions.' I know it's 15 16 been very difficult to prepare for this conference.
I know it's very difficult to come in and talk about these issues, 17 but we do thank you for your presentation today.
And we'll 18 certainly consider this, take this into consideration when 19 x '
we're-considering what action we need to take in response to 20 this Ts' sue.
And, Gary, I think you indicated that we'll 21 convene and take this into consideration and expect something 22 in -- what?
Approximately a month?
Or do you want to go out 23 24 on a --
GARY SANBORN:
I won't go out on a limb.
25
141 1
(LAUGHTER) 2 GARY SANBORN:
I guess before you make the last 3
remark you have, I auld ask whether the information you've 4
given us today, the two documents that you've given us today, 5
can be made part of the record in tLis meeting?
Do you have 6
any reservations about that?
7 A. CLEGG CRAWFORD:
None at all.
8 JAMES L. MILHOAN:
All right.
With that, if there's 9
r;o other questions, thank you very much.
This ends the i
10 conference.
11 g
1 12 l
.2, 13 14 15 16 17 18
]
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 l
1
142 i
STATE OF TEXAS
-)
1
- f COUNTY OF TARRANT)
This is to certify that I, Sonya WilliamF, a Certified 3
Shorthand Reporter in and for the State of Oklahoma, reported 4
in shorthand the proceedings had at the time and place set 5
forth in the caption hereof, and that to the best of my 6
ability the above and foregoing M8 pages contain a full, 7
true and correct transcript of the said proceedings.
a Certified to on this
/7 day of May, 1993.
9 10 11 I
f 12
" E ) Y Nmdb Y!ve(99 *
'~
1s SdNYM WILLIAMS, CSR
14 15 16 My Commission expires:
/4-dl-76 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
ENFORCEMENT CONFERENCE ATTENDANCE LICENSEE / FACILITY Public Service Co. of Colorado / Fort St. Vrain TIME /DATE 1 p.m. COT, May 10, 1993 MEETING LOCATION NRC Region IV, Arlington, Texas EA NUMBER 92-152 NAME (PLEASE PRINT)
ORGANIZATION TITLE GAdY SANWRH NRC I?CGick 'l CHFaRcemr efr=rcEa hinw %tvrwc N t c u tc o.> < m e.t s E tecT9nrt eu m sa f/hil /MIC079VO NR C -UR FO Mo3Ec7 /MitMtGE5Q E n H +uiussis W -- Li%
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ENFORCEMENT CONFERENCE (EA 92-152)
LICENSEE: PUBLIC SERVICE COMPANY OF COLORADO MAY 10,1993 A.
Introduction James L. Hilhoan, Regional Administrator B.
Enforcement Policy / Process Gary Sanborn, Enforcement Officer C.
Apparent Violation James L. Milhoan D.
Licensee Presentation / Discussion Public Service Company of Colorade
.E.
NRC and Licensee Caucuses F.
Additional Discussion G.
Licensee's Closing Remarks Public Service Company of Colorado H.
NRC's closing Remarks James L. Milhoan l
I i