ML20082V101

Partially Withheld Ltr Re Problems W/Security Mgt

ML20082V101
Person / Time
Site:	South Texas
Issue date:	04/26/1993
From:	AFFILIATION NOT ASSIGNED
To:	NRC, WACKENHUT ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES CORP.
Shared Package
ML20082V059	List: ML20082V101 ML20087J280
References
FOIA-93-642 NUDOCS 9505080214
Download: ML20082V101 (6)

Text

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I April 26, 1993 l

l Attn The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission The Wackenhut Corporation Human Resources, Wackenhut Corporation Unnamed Source Unnaamd source To Whom It May concern: ,

1 A copy of this letter will be sent to all of the above. Se unnamed source copies shall be kept in sealed envelopes for future use should the need'arise. Thirs letter is not meant to do any harm to any innocent person, company, or corporation, although some serious allegations will be raised.

It is our intention to try to have some serious problems resolved that we are having with Security Management, including HL&P Security Management. If a justifiable resolution to these premiens cannot be coached in the near future, copies of this letter will also be sent to the United States Department of Justice and the United States Department of Labor.

Approximately a year and a half ago the guard force was having a serious problem with an eight-hour rotating shift, and some other improprieties which we will not get into at this time.Wackenhut Morale had d wri.e.d drastically and something had to be done. was contacted, and Mr. Wayne Dearman arrived shortly thereafter. Mr.

Dearman fought long and hard to solve the problem----eene heads rolled, but he found a resolution to the problem. He returned us to a twelve-hour, four on/four off shift-just where we wanted to R -ad it is the shift that works the best for everyone, including management.

Bill White, and Richard Balcoln were appointed as Security Things went panagers: White for Wackennut and Balcola for NL&P.

well for about a week. When White and Balcola took over management, they told us they were going to make this a better place to work. Perhaps they had good intentions, but they failed miserably. WaMrmahut's appointment of Bill White as contract Security Manager was a serious mistake.

White's reign of terror, and possibly Balcoln's, started innsediately after their arrival on site. We are not sure about the correlation between White and Balcola, but we.do know that Balcolm {

. wanted a strict disciplinary policy. White started firing people and kept firing people and the intimidation goes on and on. There were approximately fifty (50) officers terminated and approximately 9505000214 941206

< . l Ik ten (10) more quit due to the intimidation.

Several employee newsletters by HL&P have been issued recentif, about all the openness and your ability to talk about problems on plant site. Evidently Security Managemeent did not get the message. Our supervisors have been telling us for months to keep our mouths shut; and, if we disagree with what aansgement says, they point to the gate and tell us that we can always leave.

We recently had a lieutenant that made an announcement over the radio telling us that if we had any questions to jot them down on a piece of paper and get them to her. She stated she was to attend a lieutenants

• umating and she would try to get some answers. For her ef forts , she received an hour-long reprimand stating that they do not have to give any answers, that it is none of our business, and to just shut up and do our jobs. White had stated before, when we had some questions, that he would not attend any briefings to answer any questions. He did pass down that you could come to his office and talk to him one on one. Once there, he could intimidate you and coerce you into saying something you really did not want to say, and then he would have you escorted off site for insubordination. There was an incident with a badge being left unattended for a short period of time in the exit tray at the west gate. There were three officers terminated in that situation of which only one was terminated for the incident itself. Of the sixty (60) or so officers and supervisors terminated or intimidated into quitting, possibly ten (10) were terminated for legitimate reasons.

This firing practice of White's reminds us of a chicken-killing dog on a farm- once they get the taste of blood in their mouth they keep killing just for the sake of killing; and, if there are any other dogs around, it is not long and they are joiningthe in on the killing also. The same thing happened here on sites chain of command became involved all the way down to one of the lieutenants. For about two months, he was having officers escorted off site (probably one per week) until finally one day he made a fatal mistake and was dismissed.

Even the head training instructor, Ray Cogdale, wanted to get in on the action. Approximately one month ago we had an SRT drill. The adversaries were coming in on the west side, and we had two responders coming from the East Gate. They quickly got to the auxiliary feed-water tant, Unit I, and st-----+1 there because it was not covered at the time. Cogdale, in the critique, told them One of they the should have run across to the other side of Unit II.

officers politely disagreed with cogdale, saying that he would not run through seventy-five (75) yards of open area, not knowing where the adversaries were, in fear of being shot. After the critique, Cogdale went to the lieutenant and wanted the officer escorted off site. She refused, or talked him out of it,.but the officer did

. receive a written reprimand. cogdale was wrong.

It is a shame that the chain of command did not band together

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to stop White's tyranny. Instead, they flushed their integrity down the r r===riria and har=== his "yee a men. I Aftar Bill White and his regime fired a large number of

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j people, they looked around and found that they were short-handed 1

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and that they were paying out too much overtime to the officers they did have left. So, now he had to find a way to keep from paying excessive overtime costs. Guess who took the biou once ,

again't All vacations were cancelled until further notice, and that is the way it stood until just a few days e@ 11most a year .

l later. We had two cases where officers had prepaid vacations, non- I retundable. In one instance, the officer had prepaid approximately

$600 (we are not sure about this figure), but they denied her So, she l

vacation. She talked to them once again, but to no avail.

quit. In the other instance, an officer had prepaid $4,200 for he and his wife to make a hunting trip. The vacation request had been turned in for several months and no action had been taken. He officer sent a speedy memo to Frank Durham to bring the vacation request to his attention and hopefully his approval. The officer received a reply a few days later, stating that the request was denied due to it not fitting their mode of giving vacations.

Needless to say, the officer was more than a little perturbed. He and all the other officers had fulfilled their obligations totheir the ,

company---why wasn't the company willing to fulfill l obligations to the officers? The officer wrote another memo to i j

Frank Durham, stating that Durham's answer was unacceptable and was Fortunately, going to hand-deliver the ===n the following morning.

from corporate that evening the officer saw Wayne

Dearman,

headquarters, walking inside the protected area and weited until Mr.

Dearman returned to the East Gate. At that time,

he approached l Mr. Dearman and asked him if he could talk to him in private for a j

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few minutes. Daarman was with White and Durham at that time.

Dearman agreed,

and accompanied the of ficer to an empty room in the East Gate. Se officer gave the second memo that he had written to Durham to

Dearman,

and also gave him copies of the cancelled checks. Dearaan studied the situation and said he would see what he could do. (The vacation was approved the following day.) j Dearman then proceeded to ask questions about Bill White and Frank )

Durham. The officer did not hold back-he told Dearmen about '

White's firing spree and some of his other asinine antics. When

Dearman asked about Frank Durham,

the office replied that he does whateverhad Bill White wants. He also told him that a group of officers even discussed putting a law firm on retainer to protect their rights because, as was evident to them, these people did not know right from wrong.

There was a female officer who also requested to talk to i

Dearman about the problems she was having. She and her husband were both officers here and, due to White's and Durham's vindictive

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ness, they would not even give them the same days off. She then proceeded to tell Daarman what Durham had . told her during an

. earlier session. She said that Durham told her that as far as disciplinary measures go that "I can do anything I want to do to This meeting took place shortly before you any time I want to". I d

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d Christmas. Knowing Mr. Deerman, who was taking notes at the time, we are almost positive that he would have advised Wackenhut's Itagione). Director of the problems we were having.

Sometime after this meeting with , a female of ficer fy 4 had requested a day off to take he yfriend to the VA 'I hospital. She was denied the day off; and, unfortunately, the gentleman passed away. This is not only sad, but pathetic.

The c' raw that finally broke the camel's back was when we found cut that Bill White had the audacity to tell some of the new hires that he plans to fire another 30% of us. Is this person this cold, this calculating, this evil, that this is all a systematic officers, the plan to terminate possibly the higher-paid complainers, perhaps even the older guards? There was a rumor that he wanted a younger guard force. It is easy to tell by looking at all the new young male guards that this was not a rumor. Why has he not hired any female guards? It was passed on that he made the comment that there were too many women on the guard force already.

How many blacks has he hired? As far as we are concerned,Hehis hiring practices are no better than his firing practices. is side-stepping the law on this one, and we know exactly how he is doing this. Are there not some serious discrimination laws being broken here? Where is Balcola? What about the Equal Employment opportunity Law? Just because you are black, it does not give him the right to fire you. Just because you are female, it does not give him the right to fire you. Just because you are 50+ years old, it does not give him the right to fire you. These people are looking for any nit-picking thing to fire us, and this has been going on ever since they signed on. We think the labor board may have something to say about this.

On the 23rd and 24th of this month, White held briefings with the shifts, supposedly to tell us about the new contract. We think that is a crock of bull--there is almost nothing in the contract for the officers, so why would he want to tell us about it? His main reason for holding these briefings was to deny that he said he plans to fire another 30% of us. The There truth is starting to get out, is an SRT training sqt.

and he is trying to cover his tail.

that said that they are going to start weeding people out. Whito also tried to put more pressure on us by telling us that we had better do a good job since this contract was only for one year; and, if wackenhut could not secure another contract, we would lose our jobs. This is bull also. Where would another security company find 200 trained officers to replace us at the drop of a hat? In his last class, which beaan with 26 or 28 participants, only one (yes, onet ) was left at the end. White, during this briefing, also told us of his hiring practices---how he checks hand-writing, or police spelling, and tries to get people with military background. The question is: If he is picking these bright, of 2s?

intelligent people, why did he end up with one person out Could this be one of his classes that he can use to side-step the

' inws of the labor board?

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1 Something smells, and we do not have time to dig up all the answers---we are all working 65 to 75 hours8.680556e-4 days <br />0.0208 hours <br />1.240079e-4 weeks <br />2.85375e-5 months <br /> per week . Beeldas that, someone is getting paid to supposedly handito thew +

improprieties. We ha'te been busting our tails for theseo pamp1<2, bending over backwarde to please them, and they went to fire um These people do not care about us, our families, the chilcLeon me have to feed and nurture. To them we are just like cloth puppets that they can discard at any time, and it must be stop3.,d inneediately!

We have been working under the most severe type of stress you could possibly imagine, knowing that these people want to fire us.

We have been working tremendously long hours under extremely adverse conditions. We see quards that are extremely depressed because of what la happening.

There is also the safety aspect to consider. For examples Suppose one of these tired, depressed, stressed-out officers has a beautiful young wife, whom he loves dearly. Things are not going well. She does not see him very much; and, when she does, he is tired and does not talk very much. When he does talk, it is about his , rummy job. She is bored and wants to party, but he is too tired. They have gone through this before. One day he comes home, and she is gone. She has packed her bags and left. A week later he finds out she is living with thic other guy from across town, driving a brand new truck---his dad has plenty of money (party timet). The officer continues to work, getting more and more depressed as time goes on. He nisses his wife and does not know what to do with himself. He continues to work, but the depression gets worse. He cannot get her out of his mind. He cannot go on.

Then he tries to figure out what caased this to happen. He realizes that it was this job---these people---that caused this.

He vows to get back at them. At 08:00 hours he signs in on Bravo Patrol, carrying 100 rounds of 223 caliber ammo, 51 rounds of 9mm amano for his two semi-automatic weapons. At 08:03 hours, with the reactor at 100% power, he cards into the control room door. At 08:04 hours, cir people lay dead or dying on the control room floor. The officer knows more about a reactor than he should.

There is a 25 mph southwest wind. Bay City has 20 minutes to evacuata. Impossible. The plume is drifting fast toward Houston.

At 08'25 hwes every TV station in the United States is interrupted with a news bulletin---there has been a horrible accident at the South P ixas Nuclear Plant! . . . . .We do not even want to think of the possib Aity of this happening.

We do not have words to express our disgust with this horrible situation. We do not want this plant shut down---we need our jobs.

We just want to know where the watch-dogs were in this situation?

Who, in Wackenhut, was watching Bill White? Who, in HLisP , was watching Richard Balcolm? Where was Speakout? Surely THEY knew of some of this. Someone, other than Security Hanagement, has not been doing their jobe.

We have an excellent group of officers here that can I

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accomplish any goals we set out to achieve, even with the adverse conditions we have been working under. j We want an investigation by the NRC, we want an investigation by Wackenhut, and we want an investigation by HL&P. We want,Asand we need, some answers. Let us get together and work as a team.

have all found out, that is the only way it is going to work.

Some of us have spent sleepless nights debating with our own conscience on what to do with our predicament. If we come forward with our allegations will Wackenhut terminate us? will HL&P have j our access denied? will justice prevail? or has mankind become so cold, so callus, that we would all be sold out for thirty pieces of {

silver?

Each shift desires to be briefed, by the NitC , without the presence of management.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely, 9.3 t

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