ML20082H351

Affidavit of Hj Robinson Re Intimidation,Harassment or Threatening of Util Employees

ML20082H351
Person / Time
Site:	Comanche Peak
Issue date:	11/27/1983
From:	Robinson H Citizens Association for Sound Energy
To:
Shared Package
ML20082H284	List: ML20082H280 ML20082H295 ML20082H301 ML20082H306 ML20082H316 ML20082H326 ML20082H330 ML20082H342 ML20082H351 ML20082H360 ML20082H370
References
NUDOCS 8312010120
Download: ML20082H351 (11)

Text

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~ AFFIDAVIT OF HOWARD J. ROBINSON Q: Please state your name and address for the record.

A: My name'is Howard J. Robinson. I can be contacted through CASE, 1426 S. Polk, Dallas, Texas 75224.

Q: Are you aware of any instances of intimidation, harassment, or threatening of employees at Comanche Peak?

A: Yes.

Q: Are you aware of cny instances of employees being discouraged from doing work right to begin with at Comanche Peak?

A: Yes.

Q: In your opinion, have such instances of intimidation, ' harassment, threatening, or discouragement had an effect on morale of employees at the plant?

A: Yes.

Q: In your opinion, have such instances of intimidation, harassment, threatening, or discouragement had a detrimental effect on the quality of work at Comanche Peak?

A: - Yes .

Q: If so, what effects have they had?

A: The' fact that intimidation, harassment and threats have existed at Comanche Peak for years, plus the bad examples set by supervisory personnel ,

of Brown & Root, coupled with the obvious lack on the part of TUSI to rectify the situation, promotes bad work practices resulting in inferior work.

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_2 Q: Can you give us some specific examples of intimidation, etc.?

A: I believe I was given a reduction of force (laid off) because I had reported bad practices to TUSI management. I had just been placed over some additional parts of our department, the material group and the expediting group within the steel fab and hanger department, at the time I was terminated.

And without prior knowledge of the potential of my being ROF'd, I was told by Martin " Slim" Rains, my superintendent, that he had to R0F me that day.

He would not give any explanation of why, nor would James Callicut, who was General Superintendent over our department. When I asked for Ken Liford who was at the time, I believe, the Assistant General Superintendent who had replaced Hal Goodson, his only explanation was that they had too much super-vision and that he had to cut down on it. That doesn't make sense; it's b' contrary to +he normal practice in that when people are cut back like that they are usually just cut back to the next level down or find some place in some other department. A general foreman suchas I was with nine years with Brown

& Raot normally would not just be terminated for reduction of force unless there were mitigating circumstances.

It is my belief that the reason that I was R0F'd was the direct result of my having written a series of anonymous letters to Joe George, Vice President of TUSI on site, wherein I had revealed to him many illegal practices within our department conmitted by supervisory personnel, which involved make-work practices, outright stealing of materials, fabrication within the shop of all manner of assenblies for the personal use offsite of superintendents within our department. I had also reported to Joe George that there were instances of gratuity taking by supervisory persons of our department from an off-site supplier of the so-called "rebar eaters," that I had made the initial purchase request for the rebar eaters for my cepartment

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and had made subsequent orders for rebar eaters within our department over a period of years. It has been revealed and acknowleged by TUSI spokesman Tony Vega in the newspapers that gratuities were furnished by the supplier of rebar eaters to certain supervisory personnel of Brown & Root. The rebar eaters were specifically purchased, as their n.ame implies, to cut through 1

'. ebar within the walls of the plant including the containment wall. At a .

later date, I was instructed to refer to them as drill bits and not rebar l

eaters because thewords "rebar eaters" inferred a "no-no" term, if you will.

I have to guess what actually happened, but it was obvious that one of the main supervisors that I had referred to in my letters to Joe George had a sudden leave-taking in October of 1982. Obviously Brown & Root manage-ment would like to ha've known who had blown the whistle on this particular pJ individual and it is my belief that they found out that it was in fact me who had written the letter to Joe George. .I have reason to believe that my identify was revealed and that I was given an R0F as a direct result of my letters to Joe George.

Af ter I left, Antonio Vega came to talk to me for a period of four hours and informed me, among other things, that he would hold a meeting with certain individuals on the jobsite to ascertain if my charges had any validity. He did, in fact, hold a meeting but it was mainly with the people that I had made charges against. To my knowledge, there was not one person at my level or below who was there who could corroborate the instances that I had related to him. The last contact I had with Mr. Vega, he acknowledged that all of the charges I had made to him over the four-hour pcriod were in fact true, but that since the head of our department ha'd gone, he felt like the biggest part a

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of the problem was over and that he had to be objective in overlooking the whole project and that he would not carry the investigation further and he intended to drop it at that point. He excused the participation of my imediate supervisor in all of these acts as being the result of just following orders.

This is a statement that I hold to be absolutely untrue and can prove.

I was terminated on November 5,1982. -

Q: Do you know of other instances of intimidation, etc.?

A: There's another instance which I was not directly involved in but which I saw and believe to be intimidation. This involved the short term of employment of Rose Klimist, who was appointed as head of Brown & Root

QC onsite. She came into conflict with Brown & Root and maybe others almost immediately because of her attempt to have the QC function done according O

t V to the codes and procedures, and this brought her into direct conflict with Brown & Roat supervisory personnel and she was quite suddenly removed from her position and ordered back to Houston. I believe she was removed because f she was holding too tight reins on QC. She came into conflict with Mr. Tolson, i

and her desire to perform the QC function on the jobsite conflicted with him and others onsite. I believe that she was succeeded by Jim Hawkins, a Gibbs

& Hill employee, and I believe that he was actually loaned to Brown & Root from Gibbs & Hill to head up QC function on the jobsite. I'm not sure how that arrangement worked.

I believe that h'e was somewhat more lenient in his interpretation of the QC procedures to the point that where the QC people involved in in-specting pipe hangers in the fab shop of which I was General Foreman became very distressed at the laxity of the QC functions as dictated by Jim Hawkins, and at one point they refused to inspect fabricated hanger components within l

x the shop in preferance to sending them to the field for field inspections.

They did this because they were distressed at having their work overruled by Jim Hawkins. Mr. Hawkins had close relations with the head of the steel fab and hanger department and had secured employment for his son-in-law within the shop through the direct intervention of the assistant general superintendent of the steel' fab and hanger department. Mr. Hawkins' son-in-law came into the shop at the level of journeyman fabricator but in fact was not qualified to hold such a position. Over a period of time, he learned his trade well and became a very reliable and dependable worker and a hard worker within our department and was completely removed from any of the deficiencies, harassment, and intimidation referred to previously in this affidavit. However, at the time he came in, he was not qualified and did not have his tools with him, had come from a low-level job with low pay at Nuclear Power Services, Inc.,. in Austin,' Texas, and could not be considered as qualified for a journeyman's position at Comanche Peak at the time of his employment. He learned on the job.

Another example is J. R. Dillingham. When he appealed to Brown &

Root's Houston office relative to certain illegal practices of which he was knowledgeable at Comanche . Peak, he subsequently spoke with Mr. Antonio Vega who is actually a supervisor for TUGCO, who among other duties follows up investigations of allegations by dissidents. In later conversations with me, I discussed Mr. Dillingham's situation on the jobsite with Mr. Vega and specifically about Mr. Dillingham being relieved of field duties and being placed within the millwright fab shop doing largely menial duties, basically guarding a cage. The common saying around the plant was that they let him wJ e

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out of his cage twice a day for feeding and watering. It was taken as a joke, because he was at the time a general foreman and had been for several years prior to his revelation of deficiencies and illegal acts at Comanche Peak. Mr. Vega informed me that it was on his orders that Dillingham had been sent to the millwright shop to remove him from the field because he had been threatened for making revelation of the purported deficiencies and illegal practices. Mr. Vega stated that the relieving of Mr. Dillingham of his duties in the field was done through Doug Frankum, Project Manager for Brown

& Root, and at the insistence of Mr. Vega. He was offered a reduction in rank and transfer to the pipe department or given an R0F (reduction of force, laid off), which Dillingham has told me on the advice of his lawyer he took q the reduction of force and left the jobsite.

It is common knowledge among all personnel at Comanche Peak that when someone seeks relief by going to either TUSI or Brown & Root or the fluclear Regulatory Commission with allegations of deficiencies and illegal work practices, they will suffer the same fate that has been suffered by their predecessors such as Charles Atchison, J. R. Dillingham, and myself.

This is so strong on the jobsite until some people who .to my knowledge would reveal these deficiencies and illegal work practices refuse to do so because they know that their job and their career would be suddenly terminated without recourse. Too often they have seen the flRC Region IV take a pro-company stand when some person tried to reveal these deficiencies and illegal work practices, and that these persons were fired or relieved of their duties and many are no longer involved in nuclear construction as a result of their O

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r attempt to bring before some authority that would correct the situacion.

Q: Are there specific problems in construction or design at Comanche Peak which you believe currently exist (which have not, as far as you know, been.put into the process to be corrected) to which you could take the Licensing Board and show them? ' And would you be willing to attempt to do so?

A: From the position I held it would be difficult to pinpoint the ,

deficiencies in the field. My duties as general foreman over the fab shop consisted of fabricating items such as pipe hangers, cable tray hangers, and Q miscellaneous steel assemblies for subsequent installation in the field.

I was not involved in the field installation and therefore would not be able to go to a particular site to show where deficiencies exist. I did, over a period of about three years, engage in an ongoing argument with one of the V foremen within the steel hanger department whose duty was to install ' hangars in the field where he challenged the practice in the fab shop of drilling 1" holes in base plates to the cade allowable of 1-1/16" diameter for a 1" bolt. His stand had been that'we were allowed to overdrill the hole to a l

l-1/8" diameter. This is directly contrary to the ASME code and although I read it to him on several occasions over a period of many months, he stead-fastly refused to accept it and made the statement to me that he had been drilling them oversize all along and intended to continue to. If he in fact did drill these holes. oversize, and I believe that he did, one must assume that any subsequent QC in'spection failed to identify this. This man has now to my knowledge become foreman in charge of the Drillco rebar eaters and lt Drillco drilling equipment within the steel fab and hanger department.

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I am knowledgeable of make-work practices involving hundreds of thoIJsands of hours of overtime work at premium pay within the fab shop that was not justifieu oy the work at hand. Morale within the fab shop was a .

problem that I was forced to deal with daily due to having been ordered by my superintendent and the assistant general superintendent of my department to fabricate numerous steel items and assemblies for subsequent personal use offsite by the assistant general superintendent. We were ordered to install used automobile air conditioning systems on various superintendents' pick-up trucks, oftentimes on days when we were on overtime at premium pay.

We would be ordered to park the trucks on the " patio" in order to hide them from general view while they were being worked on. This involved having good and Christian workers performing known illegal acts as ordered by their

(-) superintendent through me and this had a detrimental effect on their morale and was a constant problem that I had to deal with each day. Brown & Root had previously been cited by the Nuclear Regulatory Conmission for the general low morale of their employees at. Comanche Peak and the resultant poor work-manship performed by the people as a result of their low morale. Specifically, within the fab shop, it was an ongoing task of .mine to attempt to keep the morale of the workers at a high level when in fact they knew that they were oftentimes working on projects that were designed and fabricated for the personal use of the supervisory people of Brown & Root and oftentimes huge assemblies thus fabricated were removed from the jobsite to be utilized on their personal property. The triggering incident that caused me to decide

to contact Mr. Joe George and to reveal to him some of the incidents that e

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_g-O were happening within the department came about as a direct result of one of my foremen expressing dismay at having to fabricate some items that were destined to be removed from the jobsite for the personal use of the assistant general superintendent. This foreman came to me very discouraged and asked me how long would we have to put up with the stealing of the superintendents.

It was at this time that I made the decision to contact Joe Geor 7 through anonymous letters ~ revealing the facts we have spoken of.

Q: Do you think that the Licensing Board would be able to visually see t

such deficiencies as you have mentioned with the naked eye, or would any additional testing be necessary to prove such deficiencies exist (and if so, what kind of testing would be required, in your opinion)?

l A: Some things they could see with the naked eye. A small gauge would be needed to measure the oversize bolt holes. An ultra-sonic tester would be needed to identify another problem, short bolts and bolts welded to the back of base plates.

Q: Why should the Licensing Board be concerned about such intimidation, harassment, or threatening or discouragement of employees, or such deficiencies What's the bottom as you may tell them about or show them at Comanche Peak?

line as far as the safety of the plant is concerned?

A: I feel like the morale of the people has a direct bearing upon the quality of their work and any low morale such as existed and still exists

.at Comanche Peak will ultimately have a bearing on the quality of the plant itself. In the light of the low morale of the employees out there and the poor quality of the workmanship, I have an uneasiness about the overall safety or the 91 e#t iteeir.

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- Q: Do you want to testify regarding these matters in the operating license hearings for Comanche Peak?

A: Yes, providing that supporting witnesses can be subpoenaed before the agency holding the meetings to support allegations made.

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O I have read ths foregoing affidavit, which was prepared under my personal direction, and it is true and correct to the best of my knowledge and belief.

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Date: Wco, 2Z/N3 STATE OF 7EXAS COUNTY OF -3 M .A.4 7

, On this, the 177/ day of d' /4#4E8 ,1983 personally appeared h g it) 4 G d [odM/ sod , known to me to be the person whose name is subscribed to the foregoing instrument, and acknowledged to me that he executed the same for the purposes therein expressed.

Subscribed and sworn before me on the f 7_dday of d'b 6541BE4' ,

198 3 a.a/5$$ $ $

Notary Public in and for the State of i zE- M S My Comission Expires: /, 8/ 0 t

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