ML20134N028
| ML20134N028 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Saint Lucie  |
| Issue date: | 01/18/1995 |
| From: | NRC OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS (OI) |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20134M972 | List: |
| References | |
| FOIA-96-485 NUDOCS 9702210169 | |
| Download: ML20134N028 (78) | |
Text
. - . . .
i I
1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION l l
3 +4 +++ l 4 OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS 5 INTERVIEW i !
6 ----------------------------------x l 7 IN THE MATTER OF: :
8 INTERVIEW OF : Docket No.
9 ERNEST ORAL POARCH : (not assigned) 10 :
11 ----------------------------------x u l 12 Wednesday, January 18, 1995 l
13 14 Training Building 15 St..Lucie Nuclear Plant j 16 7585 South Highway A1A 17 Jensen Beach, Florida 34957 18 19 The above-entitled interview was conducted at 20 9:00 a.m.
21 BEFORE:
22 VANESSA SELEWSKI Investigator 23 .
24 25 EXHIBIT E
- . 7 - ' . ;;;M w . , '1 PAGE / OF @ PAGE(S) mL a ' .ac 2 . .':c,0Frd t C., e,a ,;.,w;; lL'.
fSM L FGlA- 94 MES
\ Q
~
///',['/ 8 V Ch 9702210169 970219 A' PDR FOIA 3, BINDER 96-485 PDR
l l
l l'
2 j 1 APPEARANCES:
2 3 On Behalf of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
- 4 5 VANESSA SELEWSKI, Investigator 1 6 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 7 Office of Investigatione 8 101 Marietta Street i
9 Atlanta, Georgia 30323 i
10
! 11 12 i
13 14 1
l 15 16 17 18 l 19 20 21 22 23 24 1 25 !
. l 1
i
3 l
1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S )
2 9:00 a.m.
3 MRS. SELEWSKI: For the record, it is January i
, 4 18th, 1995. This is the transcribed interview of Ernie .
. i 5 Poarch, P-O-A-R-C-H7 l 6 MR. POARCH: Correct.
7 MRS. SELEWSKI: Do you have a middle name? !
8 MR. POARCH: It's Oral, 0-R-A-L.
l 9 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay.
10 MR. POARCH: And the first name is Ernest, !
i
, 11 E-R-N-E-S-T.
l 12 MRS. SELEWSKI: Ernest. 1 13 MR. POARCH: Yes. !
14 MRS. SELEWSKI: Poarch. This interview is being 15 conducted at St. Lucie Power Plant and present at this 16 interview is Mr. Poarch and Investigator Vanessa Selewski 17 with NRC Office of Investigations.
18 I'm going to go ahead and ask that you raise your 19 right hand to swear you in.
20 Whereupon, i
21 ERNEST ORAL POARCH, 22 being duly sworn by the Investigator, was examined and
, 23 testified as follows:
24 DIRECT EXAMINATION 25 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. Go ahead and get your
1
! 4 1 full name on record, your address and your telephone
- 2 number.
1
} 3 MR. POARCH: Ernest, E-R-N-E-S-T, Oral, 0-R-A-L,
! 4 Poarch, P as in Paul, 0-A-R-C-H. My address is .._
l (',
7 Social Security number?
j 8 MRS. SELEWSKI: We could put that on record, if 9 you want. , )
10 MR. POARCH: )
i 11 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. Are you military?
No.
12 MR. POARCH:
13 MRS. SELEWSKI: Ex-military, I should say.
14 MR. POARCH: No.
15 , _ . _ ,
,MRS. SELEWSKI: I'll go ahead and ask that you.
i 16 tell us what your position is here at St. Lucie and how 17 long you've held that position.
, 18 MR. POARCH: I am the Area Copstruction I 19 Supervisor by company title, Construction Superintendent 20 on this job in charge of construction activities of the 21 Construction Services Department, in charge of the c 22 cogistruction, field engineering and welding departments.
23 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And how long have you 24 been in this position? ,
25 MR. POARCH: I think about two years.
ll h J1 l }
5 1 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And who are your 2 subordinates at this point? Who do you supervise?
1 3 MR. POARCH: Field Engineering.
4 MRS. SELEWSKI: Uh-huh.-
s 5 MR. POARCH: You want it by name?
6 MRS. SELEWSKI: Yes. Is it a small group of 7 people or is it --
8 MR. POARCH: Well, I have one FPL employee who's 9 the project field engineer, the lead engineer. And'then I q 10 have several contractors, and they vary in number, 11 depending on whether we're in an outage or not, that work 12 for him. Jerry Kunkel and Dale --
13 MRS. SELEWSKI: Jacobs?
14 MR. POARCH: Dale Jacobs. They are the two 15 welding engineers.that work for me and they also have 16 contracted welding engineers during an outage.
1 17 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. 'And -- I 18 MR. POARCH: I also have a construction group, 19 which consists of about four FPL employees that supervise o
20 the contractor, and that also increases during an outage.
21 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And are you FP&L 22 yourself? J 23 MR. POARCH: Yes.
24 MRS. SEL5WSKI: Okay. So you're not a 25 contractor? ,
r
6 1 MR. POARCH: No.
2 MRS. SELEWSKI: And prior to coming here to St.
3 Lucie you were at Turkey Point for a while? 4 4 MR. POARCH: Correct.
5 MRS. SELEWSKI: How long were you there?
]
From '90 -- June of '86 until, I l 6 MR. POARCH:
7 think it was about November of '91.
8 MRS. SELEWSKI: And you came straight here from 9 Turkey Point?
10 MR. POARCH: Yes.
11 MRS. SELEWSKI: Zet me go ahead and get on i l
12 record what the allegation is and we'll get a little more 13 information about your position at Turkey Point.
14 MR. POARCH: Okay.
15 MRS. SELEWSKI: Norman Hallenbeck, who you 16 previously supervised, I guess as recently as July of '94,
, 17 I think he was -- he resigned sometime in July of '94, has 18 alleged that he has been given some negative performance 19 appraisals by you and demoted from his supervisory 20 position, welding supervisor, because he insisted on 21 correct work in welding procedures, and was basically 22 saying that you intimidated, harassed him over a period of 23 time and he felt that that was -- that intimidation, 24 harassment resulted in his demotion and the negative 25 appraisals that he got. And, you know, that that was a
I' 7
1 form of discrimination because he had voiced those work 2 procedure concerns or that he was trying to insist on 3 correct work practices.
4 That's the basic allegation.
5 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh.
6 MRS. SELEWSKI': And I've got a whole list of 7 concerns that he's given me and that we will discuss and 8 get real detailed on times and --
9 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh.
10 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- dates as much as you can 11 recall.
12 MR. POARCH: Right.
13 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. So you said you were at 14 Turkey Point from June of '86 to November of '91?
15 MR. POARCH: Correct.
16 MRS. SELEWSKI: And you said you supervised 17 there while you were out there, the whole time?
18 MR. POARCH: Yeah, I went there on loan to 19 Engineering for 18 months. Had one employee. Then I went 20 from -- We had a quality improvement program and I was a 21 quality improvement coordinator for a year or two.
22 And then I took over -- or started the security 23 upgrade procedure. I mean, not procedure, but the 24 security upgrade. And that was my project, which was a 25 $88 million security project. Yes.
j
I 8
1 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And what was your reason 2 for transferring from Turkey Point to St. Lucie?
3 MR. POARCH: I was offered this job. And it was 4 a less than equitable job because it was more than 15 5 miles from home. I was offered this job or I could take a 6 separation from the company, And that's.the reason I'm 7 here.
.8 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And who offered you the 9 position here at St. Lucie?
10 MR. POARCH: Dick Sipos.
11 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And was the separation 12 from the company considered a termination for you or --
13 MR. POARCH: It would have been a layoff.
14 MRS. SELEWSKI: Layoff.
15 MR. POARCH: Yeah.
16 MRS. SELEWSKI: And they were laying off 17 .others --
18 MR. POARCH: Yes.
19 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- at the same time?
20 MR. POARCH: Correct.
21 MRS. SELEWSKI: Part of the concern, and we'll 22 go ahead and talk about this since we're talking about 23 Turkey Point --
24 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh.
25 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- was that someone at Turkey
_.___.__.________._.m i
p.
- 9
~
i 1 -Point had alleged that you had intimidated and harassed f 2 them.there while you worked there.
1
- l. 3- Do you remember -- ,
i 4 MR. POARCH: That's not true. l l
5 MRS. .SELEWSKI: You said it's not true? l 6 MR. POARCH: No.
7 MRS. SELEWSKI: Did you ever have anyone talk to i
8 you about any concerns related to being -- that thought 9 they were being intimidated and harassed by you?
10- MR. POARCH: No. I had a contractor that was 11 working for the head of security for a while and then they 12 put him on my oayroll on the construction end of the job.
i 13 I had charged the young man with coming up with a turnover J 14 in that procedure and making us into -- we had probably a 15 hundred turnovers.
16 And, oh, about three weeks -- I'm guessing now, 17 but several weeks after he was into the project he had i
18 written a letter saying that the project was behind 1
19 schedule, which had nothing to do with what I'had charged 20 him with doing, had nothing to do with quality of the 21 product.
22 So I told hi.m I no longer needed his services. ;
23 So, I thought he was a troublemaker.
24 In that instance, the head of security there 25 called the head of security in Juno and alleged that I had
_ _ .- , . _ . __ _ . . _ _ _ . . . _ _ __ . . . . _ _ __ _ _ = .
l J
10 1
1 violated the SPEAKOUT procedure, which was governed at 2 that point by NP-100, I.think, was our internal procedure. ,
3 And in that procedure I had not violated it and 4 so there's -- there was no question about the quality or 5 safety, nuclear safety of anything to do with that 6 situation.
7 But, at that point I was relieved of my duties as 8 head of the security upgrade-and went to work with the 9 start up supervisor in dealing with the outage.
10 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay.
11 MR. POARCH: So that was not any harassment. It l
12 was a cut and dry, easy, early situation. l 13 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. So the contractor, what 14 was his or her name?
15 MR. POARCH: I don't remember. It was a he. ;
i 16 And I could find that out, I think.
17 MRS. SELEWSKI: So as far as you know, there was 18 no allegation made by the contractor to SPEAKOUT, or was 19 there an allegation made to the --
20 MR. POARCH: There's a whole SPEAKOUT file 21 concerning this matter.
22 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay.
23 MR. POARCH: Which you probably can get.
24 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay.
25 MR. POARCH: Because, to my knowledge, my people
I 11 1 went to SPEAKOUT about my creatment.
2 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. ,
1 3 MR. POARCH: I didn't personally. l l
4 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And as far as you know, ;
I 5 that was not intimidation and harassment allegations? ;
1 6 MR. POARCH: No. No.
7 MRS. SELEWSKI: More a SPEAKOUT concern?
8 MR. POARCH: No. It was not a SPEAKOUT concern. l 1
9 I terminated his services.
10 MRS. SELEWSKI: Uh-huh.
11 MR. POARCH: And it ended up in SPEAKOUT after I 12 was pulled off the job. My people -- i 13 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And you went to SPEAKOUT.
14 MR. POARCH: No. The people that worked for me l 15 went to SPEAKOUT about my bad treatment. To my knowledge, 16 I think my people were the first ones to go to SPEAKOUT. l
-1 17 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. Was there any particular l 18 person that you're talking about, a subordinate?
19 You said, your people. Was there one person that ]
20 went or two people in your group?
21 MR. POARCH: There was more than one. And I can 22 get those names for you. But I don't know if I have got 23 it. One of the gentlemen that worked for me there works 24 .for me*here. And he probably could help me put the list 25 together. He probably knows more about it than I did. I
I 12 1 never asked anybody about it. I just -- I just know that 2 our people -- my people went to SPEAKOUT about that.
3 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. I understand. What --
4 Did you ever hear of the contractor going to NRC and 5 complaining about any type of --
6 MR. POARCH: Not to my knowledge, no.
7 MRS. SELEWSKI: -
problem with you --
8 MR. POARCH: No.
9 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- or intimidation, harassment?
10 MR. POARCH: No.
11 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And what was -- What did 12 you do before you were at Turkey Point?
13 MR. POARCH: I went to Seabrook. I was 14 contracted out as a consultant to Seabrook to finish the 15 Seabrook Plant. I had worked on Unit Two here. And the 16 project manager, Bill Derrickson, had about three of us 17 that work -- he took over at Seabrook. And I was up there 18 for 18 months until we loaded fuel. And then I went to --
19 back to Turkey Point.
20 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. I'm going to start going 21 to some specific incidences Mr. Hallenbeck has mentioned l
22 or talked about.
25 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh.
24 MRS. SELEWSKI: And just -- Mainly, just tell l
25 you what he'd claiming --
l
13 1 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh.
2 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- and allow you your chance to-3 explain --
4 MR. POARCH:- Sure.
5 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- what happened.
6 <
There was a Fall 1993 outage in which 7 Mr. Hallenbeck said that he held up the work schedule 8 because of an, unacceptable weld on the Bergen-Patterson 9 Support for the component cooling water system.
10 Does that -- Do you remember that incident?
11 MR. POARCH: Yeah. I remember that because he 12 went -- SPEAKOUT had -- he went to SPEAKOUT with the same 13 concern. And I remember the incident. And I recovered 14 all the paperwork for SPEAKOUT and they have it.
15 It was handled in a proper way. It was a bad 16 weld and we were buried.
17 'MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. Okay.
18 MR. POARCH: But I didn't -- What was the 19 allegation?
20 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. I'm going to go more 21 into --
22 MR. POARCH: I don't understand what the 23 allegation is. And that's true, there was a problem 24 <there.
25 MRS. SELEWSKI: I just wanted to be sure you a
t-14 I i 1- recalled that --
I 4
2 MR. POARCH: Yes, I do. )
i '
- . 3- .MRS. SELEWSKI
- -- time frame ~so that I can go
! 4 into details about what his concern was there.-
5 MR. POARCH: Okay.
l 6 MRS. SELEWSKI: He directed -- Mr. Hallenbeck 2
7 directed the weld to be removed, which showed this three-1
! 8 eighth inch opening in a wrong Bergen-Patterson part. And 4
9 of course, he claimed that you became very upset with his 10 actions in trying to stop the work and look at the l 11 problem, and that you tried to convince everyone, j i !
il 12 including the Juno engineer -- and I don't have a name of 13 who that is, you may remember -- to accept the weld as it 14 was without replacing it or taking it and looking at it.
15 MR. POARCH: I don't recall any of that. But I 16 would say -- any part of trying to convince anybody to j 17 accept it. But I know that that, in some cases it I
18 wouldn't be uncommon because if a -- if something is not ]
19 per the drawing, then engineering can do a safety 20 evaluation and the calculations on what weld metal is i 21 there versus the load.
1 22 And sometimes it's acceptable, even though it's !
l 23 not per the drawing, and then you write a discrepancy 24 report on it. And it's used as is because, you know, 25 there's certain safety factors built into everything and l
-l
15 1 they've calculated that you don't need to repair it.
2 And I don't recall that, but I do know that there 3 was a discrepancy report or a nonconformance report 4 written on it. And I think we had to repair it and it was' 5 repaired, but that's what engineers do. If they can't 6 accept it, they tell you to repair it. -There's nothing 7 uncommon about that.
8 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. Do you remember getting 9 upset or angry with Mr. Hallenbeck about that incident?
10 MR. POARCH: No.
11 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. So do you remember what 12 was said? Did he say, hey, we need to stop work? And did 13 you -- Did you just have some questions about it, you 14 know, well, is there something we can do to -- if you can 15 recall any conversation?
16 MR. POARCH: I don't recall that much detail. I l 17 do recall the problem, though.
18 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay.
19 MR. POARCH: And I was probably upset that we 20 had a problem. That's -- There was -- That system, it 21 usually gets on critical path at one time or another. But 22 I get upset if I have a flat tire. But --
23 MRS. SELEWSKI: Uh-huh.
24 MR. POARCH: But not -- I don't recall getting 25 upset at him. No.
16 1 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. Okay. He said that -- He 2 doesn't give any specifics at this point.'And I'll have 3 some specifics a little bit later --
4 .MR. POARCH: Okay.
5 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- that I'll go into.
6 In general he said that after that incident, he 7 felt that he was harassed by you -- and again, I don't 8 have any specifics --
9 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh. j l
10 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- at this point -- because the !
\
11 train swap was delayed which made you look bad. j i
l 12 MR. POARCH: It didn't make me look bad. And 13 the train swap wasn't delayed for the -- because of that l 14 hanger, to my knowledge.
15 If I recall right, well, we didn't hold -- the l 16 Construction Services Department didn't hold train swap up 17 anyway. Mechanical Maintenance didn't finish part of 18 their work, and that held the train swap.
19 It didn't make me look bad. I think it's -- You 20 know, it's not true.
21 MRS. SELEWSKI: Do you recall anything that 22 could have been perceived as intimidation or harassment on 23 your part to Mr. Hallenbeck after that incident, any type 24 of confrontations between the two or you or anything he 25 could have perceived as intimidating, harassing, or --
9 17 1 because he spoke up about that? i 1
2 MR. POARCH: No. Not because he spoke up about 3 that did we have a confrontation. One confrontation, two i
4 confrontations. But itLhad nothing to do with that i 5 -incident. And I don't even know if it was before or after
-6 that incident.
7 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And we may get into the i
8 specifics of those' confrontations.
9 MR. POARCH: That's fine. ;
I 10 MRS. SELEWSKI: He may have brought those up. !
l 11 MR. POARCH: Okay. e j l
12 MRS. SELEWSKI: Well, go ahead. And what !
13 confrontations were those? Do you remember what those 14 were related to?
15 MR. POARCH: At one -- At some point, and I 16 don't recall, it was during a non-outage period, my boss 17 wanted me to get Norm and meet him at the South 40 Weld-18 Test Facility and look at cleaning it up, repairing it, 19 and so forth.
20 I had asked Norm to meet us at a certain hour.- I 21 think it was 9:00 o' clock in the morning. And at 9:00 22 o' clock in the morning he wasn't there. So I went back 23 and I found him. He was in Engineering. I reminded him 24 of our appointment with my boss.
25 So my boss and I went on out to the South 40. He
i I
?
18 1 said he'd be right there. And we were out there 20 2 minutes and did our job, did our deal, and Norm never -
- 3. showed up.
4 When I got back, I asked him what he was doing 5 that he couldn't show up. Well, he said, I've taken care 6 of problems and doing what I'm paid to do.
7 I said, there was no emergency then. He said, 8 no. And he said right in front of my office in the 9 hallway where other people can hear it -- another guy did 10 hear it and thought it was ridiculous -- why are you 11 always harassing me, buddy.
12 And that was the one and only time I'd ever heard 13 harassment until the allegations came up.
14 MRS. SELEWSKI: Uh-huh. I i
15 MR. POARCH: The other incident, which happened 16 early on, prior to the outage, he was always on the back 17 porch smoking. I call it the back porch. It's a little j 18 area, smoking area. And he'd ho'd 1 meetings out there, and 19 so forth.
20 And I made a comment, something to the effect, 21 and in jest, I thought -- well, it was in jest, that I was 22 going to try to get them to help the construction guys out 23 because welding was slow and give you guys something to 24 do.
25 Well, he took offence at enat and told me that he l
. .. m. . . . . _ _ ~ . . . . . . _ _ _ . _ _ _ . _ _ _ . . _ . _ _ _ . . _ . . _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ __..
I I
19 4 1
1 did take offense at it. !
2 I told him that I would -- I apologized if it 3 hurt his feelings, and I would never say anything in jest 4 again, and that if I had something to say, he better pay 5 attention.
c, 6 And that was the only two instances, other than 7 when we came over to H.R. and some other things that we'll 8 probably get into later.
-9 MRS. SELEWSKI: Uh-huh.
10 MR. POARCH: Okay.
I 11 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. When he mentioned to you 12 -- The first incident you just mentioned about the 9:00 13 o' clock meeting and him not showing up --
14 MR. POARCH: Right. i 15 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- what was your response when 16 you (sic) said, you're harassing me, buddy, or however he l
17 put that?
18 MR. POARCH: I'said, I'm not harassing you. I'm-19 asking you legitimate questions and I expect a legitimate 20 answer.
21 MRS. SELEWSKI: Uh-huh.
22 MR. POARCH: And I think that was the end of it.
23 And then~I came over -- He had been over to see Andy prior 24 to that because he didn't want to report to me. He wanted 25 to report directly to my boss. And I called Andy DeSoiza, l
l
J 20 1
1 the gentleman you met earlier. And I says, you're going ;
2 to be getting a call from Norman. He says I'm harassing 1
4 3 him again.
4 MRS. SELEWSKI: Uh-huh. l 1
5 MR. POARCH: And sure enough, there was. And 6 subsequently, we had a meeting with my boss, Norman, and 7 Andy over here.
8 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And we'll get more into i
9 that in just a short while.
10 MR. POARCH: Okay. ;
1 11 MRS. SELEWSKI: Do you remember at what time I
12 frame that was? And I may have it in my notes.
13 MR. POARCH: I couldn't -- I tried to recall it 14 when I went to SPEAKOUT to answer Norm's allegations. And 15 I think I took a guess at it at that point. But I j 16 wouldn't venture a guess right now.
17 If you want those documents, SPEAKOUT documents, 18 I'm sure you can get those.
19 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay.
20 MR. POARCH: It was during a non-outage time, is 21 all I remember.
22 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. What about the time frame 23 for that second incident that you just mentioned, do you 24 recall that time frame?
25 MR. POARCH: That was -- That was earlier than
21 1 the first one we talked about. And I don't recall that 2 one either. It was shortly after I took over the job.
3 MRS. SELEWSKI: Which was in '92 or --
4 MR. POARCH: I came in, say, December of '91.
5 And we were finishing an outage when I came here. Then we 6 had one more outage. And right after that, the second j 7 outage, Herman and I were promoted at the same time, or 8 given the jobs at the same time. Well, actually, it 9 wasn't a promotion. But I was given that job.
1 10 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. We'll go back to that l
11 incident which you talked about the Bergen-Patterson 12 Support and where he said you got upset with him and -- l 13 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh.
14 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- written up. l 15 He said that following that incident you would !
! 1 16 not speak to him and purposely excluded him from meetings '
4 17 that were scheduled.
18 MR. POARCH: Not true. In fact, I had to remind 1
19 him to come to meetings. We have a meeting, a daily 20 meeting. I don't -- Sometimes at 9:00 o' clock. And we've 21 changed it since to 2:00 o' clock, where we go over
, 22 everything that's going to be done the next -- the next 23 day.
24 And I thought he should attend that. And any 1
25 discussion -- anything about meetings, he was usually
22 1 reminded he should come, instead of excluding him. He was 2 never intentionally excluded from any meeting.
3 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. Then he mentions an 4 incident where -- related to a Spring '94 Unit One outage ,
I 5 relating to the DEH System on the turbine deck.
6 What does -- Does DEH have a -- does that stand 7 for anything?
8 MR. POARCH: It does. But it's a control system 9 for the turbine, part of the turbine movable oil system.
10 And I don't recall what it stands for.
11 MRS. SELEWSKI: He mentions that time frame, i
12 Spring '94, where he stopped welding work on an instrument !
i 13 line, and he mentions that system, because the welding 14 procedure required an amendment before continuing work.
15 And he said that on March 9th, 1994, a welding 16 engineer presented a problem to him about the weld on the 17 DEH System. And then he explains what that was.
18 Do you recall that period of time and what the 19 problem was with the DEH?
20 MR. POARCH: Yeah. I have some sketchy 21 regulation -- Regulation.
22 MRS. SELEWSKI: Recollection?
23 MR. POARCH: Recollectj.on. Because it really 24 wasn't something that required a lot of attention, in that 25 it was not on critical path, to my knowledge. And I knew
i 23 i i
1 there was a problem there. And I know vaguely what the l 2 problem is. l
! l I
3 There was some insufficient engagement in some i
4 tubing socket welds. And I think, and I can't -- Well, I 5 shouldn't think, I guess. This is going on record.
l 6 But I didn't think that Norman caught that i
- l 7 problem. And we ended up radiographing the joints to see l 8 if there was sufficient engagement. And there was not.
I '
9 And we cut it apart and repaired it.
1 10 And being upset, I don't recall being upset about i 11 it, except that it's other than you don't like to redo 12 work. That's all. It's an efficiency thing. You don't
?
l 13 mind -- You redo it if it's wrong, but what's upsetting is i
14 that it was done wrong the first time.
15 And we repaired all the welds. And there's also
{
16 documentation on that that I provided to SPEAKOUT. That 17 was well documented and taken care of.
j l
18 MRS. SELEWSKI: So did you get upset with 3
19 Hallenbeck for the work having to stop to get the
$ 20 procedure amended?
21 MR. POARCH: No. And I don't recall the 3
22 procedure having to be amended. Paybe it did. I recall
- 23 having to redo the welds because we had insufficient 4
24 engagement. I didn't know there was a problem with the 25 procedure, or I don't recall it.
4 4
, - m e = ,
24 1 MRS. SELEWSKI: Yes. He did mention that the f
2 Juno Beach Office took about two or three hours to amend 3 the procedure. And he explained to you that this would i
And he said that you told him -- you j 4 have to be done.
5 asked him, well, who else knew about the problem. And 6 Hallenbeck said himself, the welder, and the welding 7 engineet.
8 And you told him that if nobody else knew about 9 it, to keep welding while the procedure was being revised.
10 MR. POARCH: Not true. .
1 11 MRS. SELEWSKI: You didn't tell him thal?
l 12 MR. POARCH: No.
13 MRS. SELEWSKI: Do you remember telling him 14 anything that's similar to that --
15 MR. POARCH: No.
16 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- that he may have mistake --
17 mistook for --
18 MR. POARCH: No. I don't. I don't recall it 19 and I don't think I would have said it. Well, I know I 20 wouldn't have said it.
21 MRS. SELEWSKI: And Mr. Hallenbeck said, well, 22 that can't be done. We can't -- We have to just place the 23 welding on hold until the revision is complete.
24 He said that you became angry with him because of 25 having to wait.
I s
25 .,
1 MR. POARCH: No. ;
2 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. Were you angry at 3 something else at that time frame that he may have --
i 4 MR. POARCH: I have -- ;
l 5 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- misunderstood what you were 6 angry about?
7 MR. POARCH: I don't know if I was angry or 8 happy that day. I don't remember.
9 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. Then he says after that 10 incident regarding the DEH System that you harassed him 11 about not attending meetings and you began giving his 12 employees directions directly from you to his employees, i
13 instead of going through him.
14 MR. POARCH: I guess you'd have to ask him his 15 definition of harassment. Because I stated earlier I'd 16 have to remind him to attend meetings. And I don't 17 consider-it harassment.
u 18 And, no, I didn't go directly to his employees.
]
19 In fact, he had his employees so afraid to talk to anyone 20 else that if I had gone directly to his employees, it 21 would have gone to him immediately.
22 MRS. SELEWSKI: Uh-huh.
23 MR. POARCH: No. I might have seen one in the 24 hall and asked him a question. But I do that anyway. And 25 I don't know if that's ---No, I didn't circumvent his
O i l 26 ,
1 authority at all. l
. 2 MRS. SELEWSKI: And we'll get more into the j .
3 employee relationship then in a while.
4 And then he said that he was accused of not i
j 5 staying abreast of the work activities. I don't have any 6 specifics on what he means by that, other than --
i 7 MR. POARCH: Well, the only thing I can think 8 of, if he was surprised by a welding job coming up the 9 next day, I might have told him if he had attended the 10 daily meeting, he would know that. I might have. I 11 probably did. But that's not harassing him.
12 MRS. SELEWSKI: He felt that this harassment --
1 13 And again, that's a real generic term. l 14 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh.
15 MRS. SELEWSKI: - .resulted from his not doing 16 what you directed or wanted. l l
17 MR. POARCH: There was no harassment. Period. !
j 18 Zip. Point. No harassment.
19 MRS. SELEWSKI: He felt that he did not fit into 20 the new regime because he did not want to bend rules to 21 cut cost.
22 MR. POARCH: He chose not to fit and to battle 23 the new regime.
24 MRS. SELEWSKI: Why do you think he did that?
25 MR. POARCH: I have no idea. It might have --
l 27 4
~
1 You know, it's guessing. ne was here for five or six 2 years and here comes somebody in three or four years after ;
3 he'd been here and gets a higher job. Maybe that was it.
4 I have no idea.
5 MRS. SELEWSKI: When you first started here 6 supervising Mr. Hallenbeck, you started supervising him 7 in, what, '92 when you -- in '917 8 MR. POARCH: I think it was '92. July of '92, I 9 think.
t 10 MRS. SELEWSKI: Do you recall if there -- in the 11 beginning of your supervising him that he had any problems 1 12 with you or any disagreements, or that you had any with i
13 him in the very beginning?
14 MR. POARCH: Only the one I mentioned earlier 15 when he -- when I -- that we talked about earlier. And 16 that was the -- when I said I'm going to give him 17 something - give his guys something to do during a 18 non-outage time.
19 MRS. SELEWSKI: Do you recall from the very 20 beginning a personality conflict with Mr. Hallenbeck?
21 MR. POARCH: Only that incident. ,
22 MRS. SELEWSKI: The incident which you mentioned 23 before? .
l 24 MR. POARCH: Correct.
25 MRS. SELEWSKI: Then he goes into talking about
28 1 that he felt that you poisoned the thinking of his welding 2 engineers, which I'm assuming he's talking about Jerry 3 Kunkel and Dale Jacobs.
4 MR. POARCH: Correct.
5 MRS. SELEWSKI: Because he's saying for --
6 MR. POARCH: Not correct that I poisoned them.
7' Correct as to the name.
8 MRS. SELEWSKI: As the name. Okay.
9 MR. POARCH: Yeah. l l
10 MRS. SELEWSKI: That they were -- He said they I 11 were loyal employees and they turned a hundred percent 12 against him. Everything was going real smoothly until 13 April of '94 when Hallenbeck was placed on third shift to l 14 assist with a 24-hour coverage of a pressurizer crack )
15 repair and Dale Jacobs was placed on first shift. And 16 there was an incident between he and Mr. Jacobs during 17 that time frame.
18 Do you recall hearing about that, where they had 19 a confrontation?
20 MR..POARCH: Yes, I do.
21 MRS. SELEWSKI: If you can summarize what that 22 is.
23 MR. POARCH: I think it should go back a little, 24- leading up to the situation.
25 Norm had gone -- come over to see Andy and said
I l
i 29 !
i 1 he could not work for me. Andy talked to myself and my I 2 boss and we decided that he wanted -- Well, Norm wanted to 3 work directly for Herman Fagley.
4 And I told -- Or we discussed it. And Andy said, 5 you cannot have this man setting your organization for 6 you. You're not his employee. He's yours until this !
7 terminates.
8 And we had another confrontation, the one about 9 where he did not attend -- show up to a meeting that 10 Herman had requested. And the four of us were here. And 11 he said, I can't work with Ernie. There's no way.
12 And he was told that he had to make some choices 13 then. ,
1 14 So the next day -- or I think there was a weekend 15 in between -- he came in and said he was sorry that he had 16 brought this to a such high level. It was -- It had 17 gotten out of control. And he apologized and he could j i
18 work with me. ,
19 Everything went fine, I thought, for three, six 20 months. And I went on vacation. After the outage, the 21 one that he was placed on third shift -- Not by me, but by 22 the project leader of that team, who was the -- Chuck 23 Geier. I had nothing to do with him going to third shift.
24 ,
And I got back off.of vacation and I found out 25 that Jerry Kunkel had been over here and he had been --
1 l
30 1 Norm had been trying to fire him. I guess it started 2 about six months after he hired him, had been trying to 3 fire Jerry.
4 And then I guess he had harassed -- had done 5 something to Dale. Dale got in his face. And when I got 6 back, Herman told me about it. I had a talk with Dale. I 7 had a talk with Jerry.
8 And I told Herman at that point, I said, I've got 9 to do something. I can take -- I can deal with whatever 10 his problem is with me, but he's not going to beat other 11 people up.
12 So I came over and talked to Andy about what 13 should be done. And we decided, well, he -- first of all, ,
i 14 he was going to look for another place for Norm. That l 15 didn't work out. )
16 Then, let's see. The -- Norm felt -- I talked to 17 Norm about the situation. He felt he was ineffective as a 18 supervisor at that point because his employees hated him.
19 That's a quote from him. So we couldn't find another 20 place for Norman.
21 And at that point we were redoing our weld 22 program. We were computerizing it. And that was taking a 23 lot of time. So in order -- He said he couldn't be their 24 supervisor, so I made him -- appointed him to a special 25 project completing the computerization of the weld program
31 1 -- welding prograu, which was not a demotion, by the way.
2 And at that point did not make Dale Jacobs the 3 supervisor. I made him the lead welding engineer. and 4 shortly after that is when he resigned, I think. l l
5 'MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. l l
6 MR. POARCH: I also did an interim evaluation on j 1
7 him. We -- He's'having these problems. They have to be 8 pointed out and to be monitored closely. And that was -- I l
9 Again, that was consulted with Human Resources, how to 10 handle it.
11 So that's that story.
12 MRS. SELEWSKI: And that was, let's see, prior 13 to the April '94 incident when Jacobs had a confrontation 14 with Hallenbeck?
15 MR. POARCH: What was prior?
16 MRS. SELEWSKI: This interim performance review.
17 MR. POARCH: No. j l
18 MRS. SELEWSKI: When you did the change in q 19 positions for Mr. Hallenbeck, it probably was what, May?
20 MR. POARCH: I guess. I would guess that, yes. j 21 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And I have specific 22 questions about that --
23 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh.
I 24 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- that decision in -- a little 25 bit later.
I e r
32 1 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh.
2 MRS. SELEWSKI: So that -- But that position 3 where he was placed in charge of this project with the 4 computers, decoding or some -- doing something with the 5 welding program --
6 MR. POARCH: Right.
7 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- wasn't a demotion?
8 MR. POARCH: No.
9 MRS. SELEWSKI: Was he a supervisor still? Or 10 would he have been in --
11 MR. POARCH: Well, his title was still 12 supervisor. In fact, we had -- he had complained about 13 just being a supervisor when his counterpart in the plant 14 was called superintendent. So we changed his title for 15 him, called him a superintendent.
16 And I think in the company at that time he was 17 called a -- No. His title waa not changed officially with 18 the company. .It was not changed in the organization, 19 other than to upgrade his title. And his money was not 20 changed.
21 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. Well, he felt it was a 22 demotion because he did admit that he --
23 MR. POARCH: It was --
24 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- talked to you about not 25 supervising anymore.
t
33 1 MR. POARCH: Right.
2 MRS. SELEWSKI: He felt that maybe he should --
3 that that was not something he wanted to do anymore.
4 MR. POARCH: Right.
5 MRS. SELEWSKI: And that he was -- You know, he l 1
6 felt that --
7 MR. POARCH: Let me ask you a question. Do you i
8 understand that logic, Hallenbeck's logic?
I 9 MRS. SELEWSKI: Well, I can't say one way or j i
10 another. j l
11 MR. POARCH: Okay.
12 MRS. SELEWSKI: I'm here to --
i 13 MR. POARCH: All right.
14 MRS. SELEWSKI: -
get the facts --
l 15 MR. POARCH: I understand.
16 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- and ask you the questions --
! 17 MR. POARCH: Sure.
l
! 18 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- and investigate his i
19 allegations -- i 1
20 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh.
21 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- and make a determination.
i' l 22 MR. POARCH: Yeah.
i 23 MRS. SELEWSKI: But he did -- And I think you 24 even have it documented where he mentioned he thought he 25 should step down or be --
t i
34 .
i )
[' 1 MR. P0ARCHi: Uh-huh. )
is l 2 MRS. SELEWSKI: -
you know, put in another j 3 position.
, 4 MR. POARCH: Right.
5 MRS. SELEWSKI: And he did say that he was 6 thinking of resigning.;
7 Do you remember him' talking to you about that, 8 that he felt like he had lost control of the welding
. 9 department?
. 10 MR. POARCH: Yes. I think I remember. It was
'll in the conversation in this room with Herman and Andy 1 12 where he wanted to know if he could get an enhanced
- 13 package, layoff package, and get some severance pay and so 14 forth.
15 And I think that's where I-heard it, iNthis 16 room. >
17 MRS. SELEWSKI: Whose decision was it to place 18 himinthis(computerposition?
19 MR. POARCH: Well, Herman and I discussed'what 20 we could do. He evidently couldn't work with his
- 21 employees. He couldn't work with his_ superiors.'
The 22 Quality Control people were complaining about him. He
~
23 didn't have a working relationship with -- He did not have l 24 an' acceptable working relationship with most anybody I can i
25 think of.
i a
1
. _ . . . __ ~ , - - -
35 1 So we discussed it. And the determination was i 2 made. Both of us came to that conclusion,.as I recall it.
1 3 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. Was there any other 4 alternative for him to place him somewhere else or to do 5 anything else with -- i 6 MR. POARCH: Andy had looked for a place for l
7 Norm within the company and was unsuccessful finding 8 another place for a welding engineer or a welding 9 supervisor.
10 MRS. SELEWSKI: And didn't at some point you 11 discuss some training for Mr. Hallenbeck?
12 MR. POARCH: I discussed with him at the 13 performance review, which I did shortly before or after l 14 making that assignment, that he needs some -- needed some 15 supervisory skills and some supervisory training. ]
16 And his reply to that was, I've had all that i 17 stuff. I don't need that. You know, I've had hundreds of )
18 those, I think was his quote, pt Bechtel, when he worked 19 for Bechtel, and he didn't need any of that.
20 MRS. SELEWSKI: I'm going to go more into the 21 evaluations in a little while --
, 22 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh.
23 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- the details of that after I 24 go through more -- summarizing more of Hallenbeck's 25 concerns, which is basically the next subject, performance
k I
36 1 appraisals.
2 He said that he had always gotten' good l 3 evaluations until you became a supervisor in early 1993.
) 4 Well, he says 1993.
t
- 5 Was it '92 that you first became a supervisor?
l 6 MR. POARCH: I -- I.think so. Yeah. I think it j 7 was --
8 MRS. SELEWSKI: So do you recall about how many i'
9 performance evaluations you conducted with him?
j~ 10 MR. POARCH: No. But I can tell you o
- 11 specifically, you probably have all of them there.
12 MRS. SELEWSKI: I have -- I think I have all of 4
13 them. I've gotten bits and pieces.
1 14 Here's one, a review period -- this is a 4
15 Performance Planning and Review Worksheet.
{ 16 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh.
17 MRS. SELEWSKI: I don't know that this is the 18 complete packag'e. Dated from 1/1/92 to 12/31/92.
19 Now, we'll take a moment. Go off the record for
.20 Mr. Poarch to review that.
21 (Whereupon, Mr. Poarch reviewed the document off 22 the record,.after which the following proceedings were 23 had:)
24 MRS. SELEWSKI: Is this your first evaluation of
- 25 Mr. Hallenbeck?
37 i 1 MR. POARCH: It probably was.
I 2 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. Was this the complete 3 evaluation, this one page?
4 MR. POARCH: I think so.
l 5 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. l i
6 MR. POARCH: I don't -- I think so. There are 7 two pages to it now, but I -- when we.first started, I 8 don't -- I think we only had one.
9 MRS. SELEWSKI: And it's got a rating system i
10 from one to four.
11 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh.
12 MRS. SELEWSKI: And I suppose one is the best 13 or --
14 MR. POARCH: No.
15 MRS. SELEWSKI: The worst?
16 MR. POARCH: I think one is -- one is the worst.
17 Four is the best. Somewhere on here they -- Well, I know I 18 that. It's one's -- One's bad. Two's good. Two is 19 you're doing your job. And I can provide you that 20 information. It's on this document. This is a copy. It 21 wasn't copied on there.
22 Two is you're doing your job. Three is you 23 frequently exceed expectations. And four, you walk on 24 water.
25 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. I can probably get that
.O 38 1 from Mr. DeSoiza --
2 MR. POARCH: Sure.
3 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- as far as what those ratings 4 mean.
5 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh.
6 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. It looks like you rated 7 him fairly well on this one. You had a three for 8 supervising a welding program. You said that he was 9 proactive in all upcoming welding activities.
10 And then you rated him a 2.7 where he supervises 11 the welder qualification and training for JCS. :
1 12 What does JCS stand for? !
l 13 MR. POARCH: Juno Construction Services.
14 MRS. SELEWSKI: And you said, "The success of ,
15 Norm's program is evidenced by the jobs turned over to us 16 where others have failed." And that was a 2.7 rating.
17 So this was probably when you first started 18 supervising him?
19 MR. POARCH: Correct.
20 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. Do you remember any j 21 discussions with Mr. Hallenbeck at that time related to 22 this particular evaluation?
23 MR. POARCH: The previous regime had given up 24 big numbers and they started -- And I said, I don't know 25 what your -- you've gotten in the past, but we're using
39 1 just like the chart says, two, you're doing your job.
2 It's no problem.
3 And I know that some employees -- and I don'*
4 recall if Norman was one of them -- complained that their 2 5 evaluations were lower than they had been previously. And 6 I explained to them that the ones that were acceptable 7 were good, it's just got a new base . We're not going to 8 start with -- everyone with frequently exceeds 4
9 expectations. We're going to start with the base work.
10 And if you do exceed, it could be a little different. And 11 not to take offense at it.
12 And I might have had that conversation with Norm.
i 13 I don't recall. But that is a better-than-average 14 evaluation.
15 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And as far -- And there
~
16 were other employees that had received really good 17 evaluations under the old management and were -- and 18 voiced concerns to you about --
19 MR. POARCH: Yes.
20 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- receiving a little bit lower 21 under --
22 MR. POARCH: Lower. Still good, but lower. And 23 lower number-wise, but not a lower in my mind than what 24 they got from the other person, because we tried to get a 25 -- like I say, a baseline that was realistic.
.-___._.._-___.._.__._-.__..q
'i 1
40 J
MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay.
1 Let's see. We'll go on i
4 2 to the -- I think that's the next one, performance 3 evaluation frnm 1/1/93 to 1/1/94. -
I'll'give you a moment
. 4 to review that.
I q 5 (Whereupon, Mr. Poarch reviewed the document off 6 the record, after which the following proceedings were 7 had:)
I 8 MRS. SELEWSKI: It looks like you had more key 9 responsibility areas. That's the KRA's that you graded 10 him on. ,
l 11 Do you want to just explain --
4 l
l j 12 MR. POARCH: Yeah. !
, \
i 13 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- in this evaluation what l l 14 your --
i j 15 MR. POARCH: Prior to doing an evaluation you
- 16 sit and negotiate acceptable goals for performance with
- 17 the employee. i 18 Norm and I agreed with each other'that those were 4
- 19. acceptable or achievable smart -- They_ call them smart 20 goals. They have to be achievable and something that you
. 21' can measure. And I forget the other three or four things.
-22 .It's right up -- It's on that form.there.
23 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay.
24 MR. POARCH: So you sit and you ask the person 25 what he feels. And, you know, you discuss it and come to
-__ _ _ _ ~ _-
l 41 ,
l
~h 4 1 'aul agreement that, yeah, that's--- that's what you should
- 2. have as your goal for-this year.
3 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay.
4 MR..POARCH: So then subsequently you grade the 5 individual on how he did toward those goals.
6 MRS. SELEWSKI: A:dthisevaluationisdaNed '
7 2/10/94 andihe received a two, a three, a 2.5. And these 8 are, of course, different areas, a 3.3, 2.2, 3. ,
9 MR. POARCH: Nothing below you're doing your 10 job.
11 MRS. SELEWSKI: Do you remember any -- You did 12 put in the comment section that, " Norm needs to learn to 13 put more trust in others."
Do you remember discussing that with Norm?
~
14-15 MR. POARCH: Yeah. I don't remember discussing 16 it, but I had'to have discussed it with him. And trust in 17 others was -- I had -- My construction supervisors had 18 problems with the welding department.
l 19 For instance, Jerry Kunkel was on the night shift 20 and he was told not to trust Fred Gigele. He was told not 21 to trust Billy Ulbin. They were bad people and would do 22 bad things. And -- i 23 MRS. SELEWSKI: He was told by Hallenbeck?
24 MR. POARCH: Jerry Kunkel was told by Norm 'l i 25 Hallenbeck.
l f I l.
l 42 1 And he would not let his employees huve private 2 conversations with other people. He was afraid -- I don't 3 know his motives. I shouldn't say that.
4 But he would get very upset if he caught one of 5 his employees talking with someone else without him being 6 present.
7 MRS. SELEWSKI: And that was why you put that on t 8 there in the comment section?
~
9 MR. POARCH: Yes.
10 MRS. SELEWSKI: Do you remember Mr. Hallenbeck 11 being upset about that comment or saying anything in his 12 defense?
13 MR. POARCH: No. He -- Any of his reviews --
4 14 All of his reviews he would read them, say, okay, and sign ,
l 15 them. He never wanted to discuss them. i l
3 16 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And then there's the, !
17 probably the, I suppose the last performance evaluation f
18 that you did on Mr. Hallenbeck, which is dated 1995 --
19 well, '94 to '95.
. 20 MR. POARCH: Yes. This is after his employees 21 had been to Human Resources. They had had confrontations 22 with him. And after he had had confrontations with me, j 23 Herman, and we had been to Human Resource -- or been over 24 to see Andy at Human Resources about different problems 25 with him.
'I t
...._ . .- .. _ _ _ . - . . . ~ . . _ . _ _.- _ _ - . _ . _ . _ _ _ _ ___ _ .. _ __. _ . . . _
- j. 4 4 4 ;
l 43 l l -l 1 And we decided at that point that we had'to. !
3 ..
2 document his poor performance because you can't just keep l 1
{ 3 doing it by word of mouth.- I tried to be more than i d
i 4 lenient in some cases. When in any doubt,'I gave the
- 5 employee a better grade. And.as you can see from his 1
6 other appraisals, I had always given him above average j 7 appraisals.
i i 8 So I documented in this appraisal the areas he 9 needed to~ improve in. And that is this appraisal, the
- 10- last one.
11~ And his comments, what I related before, he's i 12 been to numerous supervisory schools.
'13 Not everything that I wrote under the results i 14 section is true. And he does not1 feel that he can i
15 supervise the welding department any longer.
i 16 And that -- I reported his comments on there.
1
] 17 And you can see the appraisal I gave him, which is below !
j_ 18 average.
l 19 MRS-. SELEWSKI: Okay. And this is not
- l. 20 specifically dated. Let's see. 1 i
21 Was that -- Would that have been the April-May 22 '94 time frame?
f 2 3 '. MR. POARCH: Yeah. That's probably May time
.r
! 24 frame.
l j 25 MRS. SELEWSKI: Juld this is when you gave him l'
4 i
4 4
i-
- j
. l I
1 i
,- 44 ; 3 i ,
1 specific comments and rated him related to his -;
l i
e -
) 2 relationship with his employees. And you asked -- You
' l 4 i
! 3 said that you would try to get him in a company course on 4
4 supervision. You rated him a one on his employee -
- c i
/:
4 5 development and interpersonal -- Well, it doesn't say j ;
~_
6 interpersonal skills. It just says employees' --
. 7. development. ,_
= ,
j 8 MR. POARCH: The reason for that comment, Jerry .,$2
~m* :
9 -- he would fire -- he wanted to fire Jerry Kunkel, but l 1 10 he, according to Jerry, would never try to give him .i l 11 adequate training. And when Jerry would try to discuss - i t L l 12 something with him, he would blow up and walk away. j !
- i 13 So he -- That's not the way to develop an =*
14 employee. 1; 15 And by the way, Jerry Kunkel is a very good -d'l j 16 employee. He's -- We've given Jerry additional training #
1 17 and he's doing a good job. A 18 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And you gave him a one 19 regarding being part of the team and not a stand-alone 20 participant. Well, you mentioned that his employees were i s!
21 afraid to see them talking to other employees. "You told l 1
22 your employees not to trust several of their co-workers."
23 And then specifics about who he told. ;
i 24 Bill Ulbin. "You told Bill Ulbin that Ernie
- 25 Poarch was trying to get him fired, which is not true." .2 4 !
45 1 Who's Bill Ulbin?
2 MR POARCH: Bill Ulbin is the catalytic lead 3 mechanical supervisor. And when that came to light, T had 4 mentioned to an FPL supervisor that works for me that 5 ' worked closely with Bill Ulbin I wasn't sure about letting 6 Bill take that position. And -- But I went ahead and let 7 Bill have -- take that position.
8 And about two months after he'd been in the 9 position I mentioned to Fred that I was really pleased 10 with the way Bill Ulbin performed and I'm glad that Fred 11 had promoted or pushed for Bill to get the position.
12 And he said -- He looked surpiised. And I said, 13 what's wrong. He said, well, Norm Hallenbeck told Bill 14 Ulbin you're trying to get him fired.
15 So I went to Bill Ulbin and made sure he 16 understood that that wasn't true. And then he said -- So 17 the only thing I knew was he was trying to create trouble 18 for me. Norm. So that's not the way to get along in an 19 organization, to create strife.
-:2 0 MRS. SELEWSKI: And you told him in your -- in 21 the evaluation that, "Your actions indicate that you do 22 not want to get along with your employees, peers, or 23 supervisors."
24 MR. POARCH: Correct.
25 MRS. SELEWSKI: So this is where you
N t
[ 46
-1 specifically documented some problems with Hallenbeck and 2 his employee relations and getting along with people, i
4 3 interpersonal skills.
i-4 MR. POARCH: Correct. ,
1 j 5 MRS. SELEWSKI: Was this a problem that had been
- 6 building up over years, or did it just happen --
u j 7 MR. POARCH: It would -- It would come in
!' 8 spurts, I guess. His peers -- The Quality Control people 9 had -- The head of Construction Quality Control come in my a 10 office and shut the door and said, you got to do something 11 with this nut. He's going over and trying to get us to do l
j 12 bis work, and when we refuse, he says he'll go to the NRC
\
13 on us. And he's nuts. He's going to create problems.
1 14 I said, I can't prevent him from going anywhere <
15 and doing anything.
j 16 So they didn't get along with him. His peers i 17 didn't -- I mean, his employees didn't get along with him.
- 18 And he didn't like his supervisors. So, yeah, he had a 19 problem in all three areas.
I 20 MRS. SELEWSKI:
So it was over a period of time 21 that this developed?
22 MR. POARCH: It had to have been. )
23 MRS. SELEWSKI: It wasn't like one day he came i 24 in and all of a sudden he's a different person and started 25 having problems with his employees and co-workers?
4 1
l l
l 47 1 MR. POARCH: No. He had problems with his 2 employees from day one. In fact, it's -- he -- ever since l
3 he worked for me he had been trying to fire Jerry Kunkel.
l 4 And that was six months after Jerry was hired.
5 And I informed him at that point that he's' going l l
6 to have to work with Jerry because six months -- you 7 campaigned for more than six months to get him hired. And 8 you're going to turn around and fire the young man without 9 giving him a chance.
10 And it -- So, yeah. It -- That had been going on 11 from day one.
12 MRS. SELEWSKI: Do you remember any other 13 discussions on this particular evaluation, this last one, l 14 when Mr. Hallenbeck said, well, I just -- that he felt he 15 could not supervise the welding department any longer?
16 Do you remember did he say why tnat he could 17 not -- !
i 18 MR. POARCH: He said he -- Well, I'm not 19 supposed to use the exact language he said. But he --
20 MRS. SELEWSKI: We can put the exact language on 21 the record.
22 MR. POARCH: Well, he -- Well, it's -- No. I l 23 won't need to. He said that his employee had been in his 24 face and called him a rotten person, a no good person, and 2
25 that he didn't feel like he could supervise those people l
l t
I
- . - . ~ . - - . . - - . - - . ._- -...-.. -- . . - . . - - . - - - _ - - . - . - _ _ . . . . - . _ .
l 48 1 -anymore and he wouldn't be effective as a supervisor.
2 And it was after this evaluation that Herman and 3 I. talked. And Andy had previously failed -- I think that 4 at this point Andy had failed to find him another location 5 within the~ company.
6 And so Herman -- This is the point that after l
7 this evaluation Herman and I said, well, we agreed with 8 him, he can't effectively'aupervise. And for right now 9 the best thing -- you know, the only thing we could think 10 of to -- for Norman was to finish this special project on 11 the computerization of the welding program.
12 MRS. SELEWSKI: So if he had not stated that he 13 felt he could not supervise any longer, would he have --
14 had the decision been made at that point to place him in 15 that computer position?
16 MR. POARCH: No, it had not. Something had to 17 be done. And at'that point we did not know what to do 18 because -- Well, I said I'd send'him to supervisor 19 courses. If he was -- would try to do better with his 20- relations with other people, then we could give him 21 training and maybe he would be salvageable. I don't know.
l 22 But when I didn't think it would be effective and 23 he didn't think he would be effective, it would be silly 24 to put him supervisory -- supervising people. So that's 25 when we decided to make him a special project manager.
{ !
\ l l
l j I !
i
- 1 l
l !
1 49 1 MRS. SELEWSKI: But if he had notLsaid, I can't 2 -- I don't want to be a supervisor anymore, would he have
'3 continued supervising to a point, if he had not ,
4 voluntarily stated that he did.not want to supervise or i 5 that he did not,--
6 MR. POARCH: I don't know. 3 7 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- feel that he could? !
8 MR. POARCH: I don't know. At the point I wrote 9 that, I was willing to send him to supervisor. school. So l l
10 I assumed that we were going to try to make him a usable i 11 part of the organization at that point, or I wouldn't have l 12 written that.
13 MRS. SELEWSKI: Anything else on this evaluation 14 you remember that was discussed with Mr. Hallenbeck 15 that --
16 MR. POARCH: Everything on that evaluation was 17 discussed. .
I 18 MRS. SELEWSKI: I mean, anything other than what !
)
19 you put in your comment section, do you recall?
{
20 MR. POARCH: No.
- 21 MRS. SELEWSKI
- Was Mr. Hallenbeck angry during 22 this evaluation? Was he -- What was his demeanor? !
l l
23 MR. POARCH: I'm sure he was angry. I don't --
24 I can't speak -- I can't tell you what I'm -- I don't know l 25 what was in his mind. ;
I l
_ . . . . _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ . - . _ _.. . - _ . _ . . _ . ~ . _ _ . _ . _ _ . _ . . _ . _ _ . _ _ . . _ _ . _ . . _ _ . _ . _
l 50 1 If I got it, I would be angry or upset. I'd
, 2 probably be upset that I was held in such low esteem by my 3- peers'and my supervisors and my employees.
.4 But, no, I can't comment to what -- how he felt.
5 MRS. SELEWSKI: Were there any other evaluation 6 forms of Mr. Hallenbeck that you recall, or just these l 7 three?
l l 8 MR. POARCH: I don't recall. But I can go -- I 9 can look it up, I think.
10 What do we have? We have '90. That was done in 11- '92. This one was done 12/31/92, which is actually the 12 first of '93. And then the first of '94. And then the
- 13 interim one.
14 I think that's all.
l l 15 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. -I'm going to go back a 16 little bit to the Jacobs --
17 MR. POARCH: Let's get a cup of coffee and a 18 glass of water.
19 . MRS. SELEWSKI: We can do that. ,
l 20 MR. POARCH: Okay. i l 21 MRS. SELEWSKI: Take a break. ,
l 22 MR. POARCH: Thanks.
23 (Whereupon, a recess was taken at 10:06 a.m.,
24 after which the proceedings resumed at 10:15 a.m. as ;
i 25 follows:)
i
l i
51 1 MRS. SELEWSKI: he're back on the record after a l 1
2 short break. !
l 3 I was going to go into the Jacobs incident again l 4 in which there's a confrontation --
l 5 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh.
6 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- between Mr. Jacobs and
! 7 Mr. Hallenbeck in April of '94. And you gave me some 8 background information earlier.
i 9 Were you aware of this confrontation that they i
10 had when Mr. Jacobs basically was calling Mr. Hallenbeck 11 some names and telling him he was a liar and --
12 MR. POARCH: I -- I was on my vacation. I was j l
13 looking for a farm to buy in Tennessee. So I was away l l
14 from work for at least a week. )
15 And I came back and that's when I found out about l 16 it. It had happened while I was gone.
17 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. How did you find out 18 about it when you came back?
19 MR. POARCH: Herman told me first. Herman's my 20 boss. So I went and talked to both of them, the 21 employees.
22 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. What did Herman tell you, 23 that you --
24 MR. POARCH: He told me that Jerry had gone, 25 Jerry Kunkel had gone to Human Resources, and that Dale l
l l
l
1 1
52 1 Jacobs had'had a confrontation with Norm. And things were 2 bad.
3 MRS. SELEWSKI: What details did he give you 4 about the confrontation between Jacobs and Hallenbeck?
5 MR. POARCH: None, as I recall.
6 MRS. SELEWSKI: Just that they had an argument 7' or a confrontation?
8 MR. POARCH: Yeah. And I guess Dale Jacobs had 9 gone to Herman in my absence and told him that it had 10 occurred.
11 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. Did at some point you 12 discuss with Mr. Jacobs what was on Mr. Hallenbeck's i
13 performance appraisal, that supposedly being the last one, j 14- when you were preparing it? l 1
15 MR. POARCH: No. In fact, that was -- I did the l 16 last performance appraisal after the confrontations.
17 MRS. SELEWSKI: .Okay. ]
~
18 MR. POARCH: That was because -- or the main 19 reason that I had to document something, because it would 20 -- the combative attitude was spreading in all directions.
21- MRS. SELEWSKI: Some of the problems that you ;
i 22 were having with Mr. Hallenbeck relating to his deleting 23 the welding files from the computer, I suppose -- it looks ,
24 like Jacobs mentioned to Hallenbeck, you know, you deleted 25 computer files, and Hallenbeck said, no, that's a lie, I
53 1 didn't do that, and he explained his side of that.
2 He felt like that some of what was on his 3 performance evaluation had been communicated to Jacobs. 1 i
4 Hallenbeck felt like, you know, that was personal !
5 information that either you or Fagley told Jacobs about, l l
6 about his problems with employees and interpersonal l l
7 skills. I 1
8 MR. POARCH: No. I think Dale Jacobs -- If I )
1 9 recall right, Dale Jacobs told me about the deleted files 1 10 after I got back from vacation, after the confrontation.
11 MRS. SELEWSKI: So you didn't mention to Jacobu l
l 12 anything about Hallenbeck's performance evaluation and i i
! 13 what would be on it --
14 MR. POARCH: No. No.
15 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- and that -- about the l 16 computer files being deleted?
17 Did that happen while you were on --
l 18 MR. POARCH: No. Dale mentioned it to me.
19 He --
l 20 MRS. ::E;EWSKI: Okay.
I 21 MR. POARCH: He informed me that the files had 22 gone missing and that we have a computer specialist in the 23 office. He had gone into the LAN System and there's a 24 program that tells you when and what was deleted. And he 25 told me that they were deleted at -- in the middle of the
l 54 1 night, at same time that Norm was on the third shift with 2 his welding problem with the pressurizer.
3 So I was informed by Dale that this had happened.
, 4 MRS. SELEWSKI: So was -- Did yo,u ever accuse 5 Mr. Hallenbeck of purposely deleting welding files?
i
- 6 MR. POARCH
- I asked him about the welding 7 files. And he says, I don't know what happened. And I --
8 I didn't say any more because I couldn't -- Well, it was t
9 done under his personal ID at a time when he was on site.
10 I never brought it up again because I -- when you 11 get into the LAN System and you walk away from your desk l
12 and you do not get back out, someone could come in and 13 delete anything they wanted to out of your files.
14 So there's no proof and there's no reason to say 15 any more about it. But I did ask him about it. And he 16 said, no, he didn't do it. He don't know what happened.
17 That was the end of the conversation.
18 MRS. SELEWSKI: So you didn't accuse him and --
19 MR. POARCH: No.
20 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- make a big deal out of that?
21 MR. POARCH: Huh-uh. No.
22 MRS. SELEWSKI: Was his deleting the computer 23 files, was that part of the reason for putting him in 24 charge of this computer --
25 MR. POARCH: No.
-- .. - . . . - . ~ . - . - .. - . . . . . . - - - . . . - - - . --. . .. . .-
,=..
4 e
55 1: MRS. SELEWSKI: -- decoding project that he wan 2 going to be placed in?
3 MR. POARCH: No.
4 MRS. SELEWSKI: Back to the performance 1
i ,
5 evaluations, are there other employees that you supervised j 6 that have similar evaluations as far as being lower than 7 what they -- And you did mentien that before.
8 Are there specific people that you've given this j 9 type of evaluations to that are under your supervision
+
10 that can -- I can compare?
11 And showing consistent treatment is what I'm I 12 getting at.
13 MR. POARCH: There's no'one that I -- This 14 final evaluation --
15 MRS. SELEWSKI: Uh-huh.
16 )Ul. POARCH: -- where I gave him two one's, l
i 17 there's nobody in my organization that's got one of those.
18 Now, you can compare these two --
19 MRS.-SELEWSKI: Uh-huh.
I- 20 MR. POARCH: -- with others. Sure.
l 21 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. So you feel like yoc've 22 been consistent in how you've evaluated your employees --
l 23 MR. POARCH: Yes.
24 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- over a period of time?
I 25 MR. POARCH: In fact, I'll give you the name of I
4 l
, i i
a !
i _ _ .I
)
, 1 1
56 I 1 the other employee that complained that his scores were f
2 low. And I explained to him that they weren't low, that i 3 they were average and above average. And that was I K ..
5 MRS. SELEWSKI:
6 MR. POARCH: r[ {,?-
N 7 MRS. SELEWSKI*
8 MR. POARCH: That's as far as I can 9
go. ( it may be.
! 10 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. Yes. I know it ends in l 1 That's for sure.
12 Okay. Let's see. You just -- Again, we'll go !
l 13 back a little bit to the meeting that you had with 14 Hallenbeck and Fagley was present. And he's got the date
..- _15. at -- of May 10th, 1994, when he was called in to your .
16 office and you and Mr. Fagley discussed his evaluation.
17 MR. POARCH: He was not called into my office.
18 Herman and I gave him the evaluation together in Herman's 19 office.
20 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And then he said that you 21 and Fagley made accusations -- that was his words -- about
. 22 being combative with his employees, not listening to his 23 employees, deleting computer files, instructing his 24 employees to not talk during meetings and not talk to I i
25 other employees. l I
'~~
q,,
/
y /ai, i
/
._ . - .. . - . . = - - . . - - . . - -. -. . .- . . - .
57 l
1 MR. POARCH: Jerry Kunkel had stated that he was 2 told when he came to a meeting at the plant to listen and 3 not say anything. I think we brought that up. Yes, I 4 think that was discussed.
5 There were no allegations about being combative.
6 It was written on the evaluation that he was combative. ;
7 And the other, I don't recall. We had a 8 conversation concerning the evaluation that probably l 9 lasted ten or fifteen minutes. And I don't recall what 10 all was said in that period of time.
11 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And you didn't document l i
12 any of that anywhere?
13 MR. POARCH: It was documented on the --
14 MRS. SELEWSKI: Other than the evaluation? l 15 MR. POARCH: Other than the evaluation. Yes, it 16 was documented on there. I 17 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. But no -- not in notes 18 that you kept?
19 MR. POARCH: No.
20 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. He said that those 21 accusations were not true, that he told you and Mr. Fagley 22 they weren't true and they were taken out of context.
23 MR. POARCH: And I so reflected that on my 24 comments on the evaluation.
25 MRS. SELEWSKI: He said that when he was
- = . - - .. . - . ... -- -
4 58 1 assigned to debugging the new computer program, the new l I
2 welding computer program, that you knew he did not know '
4 3 anything about programming, that he didn't understand why 4 he was placed in that position.
5 MR. POARCH: He didn't understand why?
6 MRS. SELEWSKI: He said that you, Mr. Poarch, s
) 7 did not -- that you knew that he did not know anything, 8 that Hallenbeck did not know anything about computer 9 programming, and he didn't know why you had put him in 10 that position with -- because he didn't have the 11 experience, is basically what he's saying. -
12 MR. POARCH: Do you want me to comment on what 1 13 he felt?
l 14 MRS. SELEWSKI: Yes.
15 MR. POARCH: Okay.
16 MRS. SELEWSK1: Your replies to what he's 17 claiming here.
18 MR. POARCH: Well, Norm was building tables that 19 a welding engineer would have to build. And he would 20 build a table of what metal to what metal requires what 21 procedure, what -- for filler model, preheat or no 22 preheat. And that comes from the welding manual.
23 And he was building this table -- these tables 24 for the programmers. He was not being asked to do any 25 programming. He was being asked to support the building
i i
59 !
1- of a program. !
2 And he said that the work was -- there was so 3 much to do. And so I said -- We elected to put him on it 4 full time, for various reasons, which we've discussed. l 5 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. So it wasn't actual j l
6 programming where he had to know a certain -- l l
7 MR. POARCH: No. He did not have to do any i 8 programming.
9 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- computer languages and this 10 and that?
11 MR. POARCH: Correct.
12 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. When you assigned him to 13 that position -- and I've got the letter here somewhere --
14 of debugging the new computer program, did you discuss 15 that with him?
16 MR. POARCH: It's not debugging a program, 17 because he didn't p:ogram anything, so he couldn't debug 18 it. He would have to catch the errors where the tables 19 were incorrect and make that notation so that the computer 20 operator or the computer programmer could debug the 21 program.
22 But he could find errors and the flaws by 23 comparing the tables with the program. And if I used the 24 term debugging the program itself -- I don't know. What 1
25 did I say? t I
i l
60 1 MRS. SELEWSKI: Well, let me --
2 MR. POARCH: You've got the letter.
3 MRS. SELEWSKI: Let me get the letter.
a 4 MR. POARCH: Sure.
5 MRS. SELEWSKI: I'm looking for.it. This is the
- 6 letter dated May 17th, 1994, related to Mr. Hallenbeck 7 being assigned to this other position, l l
8 MR. POARCH: (Examining document.) Okay. !
9 MRS. SELEWSKI: So you did say that it was a 10 debugging?
11 MR. POARCH: Yes, I did. I said full time 12 debugging and implementing the new computerized welding 13 program. And debugging, I meant finding errors in the 14 tables that the computer programmer would put in the 15 program.
16 I knew he wasn't doing any programming. We had a 17 contractor doing the actually program.
18 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. Did you discuss this new 19 assignment with Mr. Hallenbeck prior to issuing this 20 letter dated May 17th?
21 MR. POARCH: I don't recall.
22 MRS. SELEWSKI: You don't recall discussing it 23 with him?
24 MR. POARCH: No.
25 MRS. SELEWSKI: Do you remember if Mr. Fagley
i 61 t
4 1 discussed it with him --
2 MR. POARCH: No.
3 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- said, here's what we're going 1
, 4 to do, we're going to offer -- you know,' place you in this i
5 position and here's why?
l 2
6 MR. POARCH: I do not recall having -- or him j 7 discussing that.
- 8 MRS. SELEWSKI
- Okay. When you say you don't l 9 recall, you don't recall or you definitely didn't have a 10 discussion? l 4 11 MR. POARCH: I don't recall. I don't know if we l.
12 did or did not.
1 l l 13 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And he was -- 1
! 14 Mr. Hallenbeck was under the impression that Jacobs had j i' 15 taken over his job. And you said earlier that basically 16- he was a welding -- he wasn't a wolding supervisor, but he l
)
i 17 was a --
1 18 1 01. POARCH: Lead welding and lead engineer is g 19 what we called Dale at that point. There were two people i .
20 in the department. Dale was the more experienced, so I 21 put Dale in as the lead to take charge of the day-to-day 22 operation, as explained in the letter.
i 23 MRS. SELEWSKI: Then he goes -- Mr. Hallenbeck l
24 goes into some general intimidation, harassment concerns 25 saying that he would attempt to explain welding situations
t 1
I i 62 i
- 1 to you, Mr. Pearch, and you would respond with smart
- 2. remarks and verbal abuse. !
l 3 MR. POARCH: Incorrect. l l 4 MRS. SELEWSKI: You didn't do that?
l 4
5 MR. POARCH: No. ,
, 1 l 6 MRS. SELEWSKI: Was there any time when he may ;
i- l
7 have perceived that'you were being -- )
ij 8 MR. POARCH: I can't answer that.
t 9 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- of having smart remarks or --
a 1
10 MR. POARCH: Can't answer that.
11 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- verbal abuse?
12 MR. POARCH: I don't know what he perceived.
13 MRS. SELEWSKI: He just said that you didn't l
14 like telling him -- that you didn't like Hallenbeck l 15 telling you what could and couldn't be done regarding i
16 ' codes,' specifications, and requirements. i l
17 MR. POARCH: That's totally wrong. That's the 18 reason I hired him, to keep the welding program straight.
19 If I was an expert welding engineer, maybe I would not 20 like somebody telling me my business. But that's not my l
21 business. I hired him for that.
22 MRS. SELEWSKI: He says, " Additionally, whenever i
23 cost or production was a factor," regarding the codes or 24 specifications, and Hallenbeck speaking up, "that you 25 would scream, yell, and talk to him like he was a dog."
i l
63
'l MR. POARCH: False.
2 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. So you're saying you 3 never screamed or yelled at him in --
l 4 MR. POARCH: No.
5 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- in that way?
6 MR. POARCH: Yes. Yes, I'm saying that I never 7 screamed or yelled. Yes.
8 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay.
9 MR. POARCH: Or talked to him like a dog.
10 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. I'm going to go into some 11 specific notes that were made by Mr. Hallenbeck --
12 MR. POARCH: Okay.
13 MRS. SELEWSKI: -
giving real specific 14 instances in which he felt he was having a problem with 15 intimidation and harassment.
16 He's saying that it began in 19 -- early 1993 I 17 when you and Mr. Fagley became -- took'the place of 18 Mr. Sipos and Parks.
19 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh.
20 MRS. SELEWSKI: He said that on several 21 occasions you and Mr. Fagley called him a prima donna, and 22 that that's what you thought of most welding personnel.
23 That, I -- It appears he's considering that as a harassing 24 label or form of intimidation.
25 MR. POARCH: I don't recall calling him a prima l
1
64 l
1 donna. I can't speak for Mr. Fagley. )
2 MRS. SELEWSKI: He said that -- He said that you 3 thought that.the Nuclear Welding Manual and various 4 welding codes and specifications were filled with 5 ridiculous overkill and welding personnel were nothing but 6 empire builders.
7 Just get your response on that. Did you ever --
8 MR. POARCH: I don't feel that way. I have -- I 9 don't know what he felt I felt. But I can't comment on 10 that. But I don't feel that way, no.
11 MRS. SELEWSKI: These are all instances, as I've 12 mentioned, where he's feeling --
13 MR. POARCH: And you want me to comment every j 14 time you --
15 MRS. SELEWSKI: Yes.
16 MR. POARCH: -- tell me what he felt?
17 MRS. SELEWSKI: Whether you felt that.
18 MR. POARCH: Oh, okay.
19 MRS. SELEWSKI: Whether that was true. Wnether 20 you said that.
21 MR. POARCH: Okay.
22 MRS. SELEWSKI: Whether you did that.
23 MR. POARCH: Okay.
24 MRS. SELEWSKI: This is you' chance to --
25 MR. POARCH: Sure.
1
- . . . .- . . . .. - . ~ . . . - - . - - . . - . - - . . . . . ~ . - . . _ . - . . . . - .. - -
t 9
i
\
l 65 )
i 1 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- defend some concerns that l l
l 2 he's made ' against yo:2. )
! 3 And he mentions the' evaluations. We've already 4 ' discussed that.
l 5 Did he ever talk to you about his mental health l l
6 or his physical health being impaired because he felt like 7 he was under -- being intimidated and harassed?
8 MR. POARCH: No. He did say he was under the l
9 Employee's Assistance Program, and did not mention what i 10 kind of assistance. I didn't know, you know, if it was j R11 alcohol or nerves or whatever.
12 But he did reflect and insinuate that his job was .
13 -- And he -- He said, I think in front of.DeSoiza over 14 here, his job was overwhelming, the responsibility, and it ,
15 was just a tremendous burden to bear, and it was -- his ,
l 16 nerves were frayed.
p 17 And he said that the whole welding program was on l
l 18 the brink of disaster. And I s. aid, why, I don't have any 19 -- I don't know of any problems with it. And he said, f
l 20 well, we're going to be audited by Q.A. I said, fine. If l 21 we have a problem, we need to fix it.
22 But he took something like a Q.A. audit or an NRC 23 audit as something that was terrible. And maybe he felt 24 overwhelmed.
l 25 Harassment. Did not mention the harassment, 4
66 j 1 except for one time, as we mentioned before, why I was 2 always harassing him. l 3 And that he felt overwhelmed by his position. He 4 stated that.
5 MRS. SELEWSKI: And that was what period of 6 time? Was that during the meeting with Mr. DeSoiza and i
7 you --
8 MR. POARCH: Yes.
9 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- and Mr. Fagley?
l 10 MR. POARCH: Correct.
{
11 MRS. SELEWSKI: He said that on 7/9/93, 12 Ju]y 9th, 1993, there was a disagreement between you and 13 hin, Mr. Hallenbeck, when he approached you with the ;
14 welding department staffing requirements for the upcoming 15 fueling outage. I 16 Do you recall a disagreement about that i i
17 particular subject?
18 MR. POARCH: We've had discussion on 19 requirements, on budgets, on the staffing requirements. I 20 don't recall that one date, but we have had discussions.
21 I know at one point he wanted X number of welding 22 engineers for the outage. And I think, if I recall right, 23 I said we had to have one less.
24 And if that's -- Yeah. I guess that's a 25 disagreement. He says, I need, for instance, ten, and I
67 1 said, no, you can't have but nine.
2 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. He said that you 3 challenged every statement he makes about welding 4 problems, which I've mentioned before, and that you were 5 starting to embarrass him in front of his employees and 6 humiliated him in front of co-workers.
7 MR. POARCH: Not to my knowledge. I did not do 8 that. I -- It's a -- No one humiliates their employee in 9 front of their employees intentionally in that way.
10 MRS. SELEWSKI: Did he ever discuss that with 11 you, hey, you know, I feel like you're embarrassing me in 12 front of my employees or co-workers?
13 MR. POARCH: No.
14 MRS. SELEWSKI: Then he mentions a date of 15 7/14/93 where he approached you to sit with him,' discuss 16 the problems, which you agreed to do. I think you may 17 have touched on that meeting with him at some point.
18 And he said -- Mr. Hallenbeck said he told you 19 his responsibilities and why certain activities have to be 20 done a certain way, and asked if you had a problem with 21 the way he was doing things, Mr. Hallenbeck, the way he 22 was doing things.
23 Do you remember that meeting, July 14th, '93?
24 MR. POARCH: No.
25 MRS. SELEWSKI: And he said-that you responded 1
68 1 by stating, you're not going to scare me off.
2 MR. POARCH: Yes, I recall that meeting now.
3 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay.
4 MR. POARCH: That was the meeting where I had 5 mentioned to him that I would -- I could use some of his 6 welding engineers, give you guys something to,do, maybe 7 let your welding engineers work as one of my construction 8 supervisors, cross train.
9 And he asked _me to step in his office and told me 10 that he was very much offended by me thinking he didn't 11 have anything to do, and that -- He got loud and 12 boisterous.
.13 And I said, Norm, if I said anything to offend 14 you, I apologize. And I told him that he's not: going to j 15 run me off.- I am still the supervisor. And him calling 16 me into his office to chew me out'was fine, but still !
17 understand the relationship.
18 And that's when -- Yes, I did say, you're not 19 going to run me off. You're not going to scare me off by 20 doing this. And, yes, I do recall that.
21 MRS. SELEWSKI: Then he's got a note ,
22 December 2nd, 1993, where he said he tried to make peace 23 with you and went into your office to discuss staffing 24 requirements for the upcoming outage. And then you talk 25 about the shifts.
l' 69 1 And he -- And Mr. Hallenbeck said he needed a l 2 certain amount of people. And you disagreed with that and l
3 reduced his staff and outage budget without even know' .;
4 what the requirements were.
l 5 Do you remember that meeting? And you told --
6 MR. POARCH: Yeah. I remember the meeting where 7 we discussed staffing, as I mentioned before. And it
! 8 probably was that meeting where he wanted X number of 9 people and I said that he couldn't have -- that we weren't 10 budgeted for that many. I 11 We went through a budget cut and we reduced our 12 budget by 15 percent. And, yeah, I recall that.
l 13 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. He said that you told 14 him, you know, this is what you get and you'll have to 15 make it work.
16 MR. POARCH: Okay.
17 MRS. SELEWSKI: And that you told him that 18 that's the way it is, and if necessary, you would have 19 another supervisor who knows absolutely nothing at all l
20 about welding assist in preparing the weld documentation.
21 Do you remember discussing that with him or 22 saying that to him?
23 MR. POARCH: No. I did not say that to him. If l
! 24 I had said that to him, I wouldn't phrase it like that:
25 I'll give you somebody that knows absolutely nothing about
l I I i
70
,. I what's going on. No. ,
l 2 I might have mentioned that if there's something
! 3 that someone else could do that could help him, we might !
4 get him some more help.
5 But, no, I didn't say that.
6 MRS. SELEWSKI: Let's go off the record.
7 (Whereupon, the proceedings continue on tape l
l 8 number two as follows:)
! 9 MRS. SELEWSKI: We're back on the record.
10 On January 12th, 1994, he mentions that at that 11 point that you were challenging everything he said about 12 welding, he's always -- that you were always asking him to )
. i l 13 get around some requirement, or, how can we get around it. 1 l
14 And then Mr. Hallenbeck tells you, well, we l 15 can't, and that you get very upset with Mr. Hallenbeck and !
16 harass him even more. 1 17 MR. POARCH: That's not true. I always ask fo'r 18 alternatives. If there's not an alternative, there's not 19 much you can do about it. And getting mad and harassing L 20 him because there's not an alternative is incorrect and 21 false.
22 It's my job to look at alternatives, see if 23 there's a better way of doing something or a more 24 efficient way of doing it. And if I don't ask those L 25 questions, I'm not doing my job.
l
71 1 MRS. SELEWSKI: Then he mentions January 14th, 2 '94, he approached you and asked about working things out.
3 And I think you nay have mentioned --
4 MR.'POARCH: Yes.
5 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- when that happened. And how 6 he explained his responsibilities to you, and that, you 7 _know, that you agreed to try to get along with each 8 other.
9 MR. POARCH: Correct.
10 MRS. SELEWSKI: And he said he left your office l 11 with an uneasy feeling, but figured he'd give it a try.
12 And he invited you to come into the welding department and 13 spend some' time and see what he did.
14 And you agreed, but you did not attempt to do I
15 that or come over and try to understand what his l
16 responsibilities were.
17 Do you remember him inviting you to, you know, do 18 that? ,
19 MR. POARCH: No. But he probably did. He
. 20 probably did.
21 MRS. SELEWSKI: Is there any particular reason 22 he wanted you to do that? Was that something that he felt i
23 you didn't understand, what his responsibilities were? i 24 MR. POARCH: In my mind, I think Norman wanted 25 me to feel that his job was overwhelming and taxing or --
i 72 l 11 I've been around welding engineers-since I've been in the i '
2 business, which has been since I got out.of school.
3 And I'm not a welding engineer, but I understand
'4 what they do.
i 5 MRS. SELEWSKI: Do you remember going over there i 6 and looking and saying, yeah, I see what you do?
?-
7 MR. POARCH: I was in his office every -- you 8 know, every -- almost every day. At least once or twice a i
9- week, if not every day. And he always informed me what he 10 was doing. He would show me the tables that he was 11 building. He would show me the reports of the number of 12' weld travelers he issued, the number of weld repair 13 reports. Yeah, I was there.
14 MRS. SELEWSKI: And he's got a date of 15 February 23rd, 1994, that he says everything -- that 16 things have been deteriorating with --
17 MR. POARCH: January what?
18 MRS. SELEWSKI: He's got a date of ;
19 February 23rd, 1994.
20 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh.
21 MRS. SELEWSKI: He says that you will not allow 22 him to do anything without your concurrence. And the two 23 welding engineers who report to him are starting to fear 24 for their jobs and are taking more directions from you.
25 MR. POARCH: No. Not'true. I don't know if
73 1 they were fearing for their jobs, but I don't know -- The l
.2 one employee that he had been trying to fire might have ;
3 been fearing for his job.
l 4 Out, no, that's not true.
1 5 MRS. SELEWSKI: Do you remember not allowing him 6 to do anything without your concurrence and maybe what 7 reason that would have been? He doesn't specify what that 8 is.
9 MR. POARCH: No.
10 MRS. SELEWSKI: Was that'after the meeting with 11 Andy relating -- or was that before, relating to Mr. --
12 MR. POARCH: Was what before?
13 MRS. SELEWSKI: The February '94 time frame, was 14 that before your meeting with Andy about Mr. Hallenbeck --
15 MR. POARCH: Yes. Yes, that's before.
16 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. Was that normal for you 17 to be sure that everything goes through you regarding 18 concurrence?
19 MR. POARCH: You say, was that normal?
20 MRS. SELEWSKI: Yes. He says that you would not 21 allow him to do anything without your concurrence. And 22 I'm assuming he's talking about --
23 MR. POARCH: Going to the bathroom?
24 MRS. SELEWSKI: No. Probably not that. But 25 documents being approved or certain welding being
, I
- ?
I t 74 j 1 approved. He doesn't specify. ,
l 2 MR. POARCH: How do I know what he's talking j E )
3 about? I know of one instance where he was - he would go f
-4 to my boss and share problems. And he would write letters l l
5 directly to my boss. . j 6 And I gave him -- And actually, Herman handed me F 7 a letter one. day written to him -- to him from Norm. And 1
8 I was on the distribution. And he said -- Herman said, 9 tell him to address this correctly and go th' rough the 10 channele and we'll read it. )
11 So I took it back to him-and I said, this letter ,
12 comes to me'and you can copy. Herman, if you want to, of 13 which he did change that.
14 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. i 15 MR. POARCH: I assume that's what he's referring f 16 to.
[
17 MRS. SELEWSKI: We'll go ahead and go off the 18 record for a moment. Let me review a few things before'we 19 continue.
20 (Whereupon, documents were examined off the (
21 record, after which the following proceedings were had:)
21 MRS. SELEWSKI: We're back on the record. ,
23 Another concern that Mr. Hallenbeck voiced was 24 that you nitpicked him on a day-to-day basis telling him 25 that he was not a team player.
75 1 Do you recall --
2 MR. POARCH: No. I did not tell him he was not 3 a team player and insinuate it on a day-to-day basis.
4 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. So these actions that 5 were taken regarding his reassignment position in May of 6 '94 and his decreased performance appraisal in -- I think 7 that was January of --
8 MR. POARCH: No. It was probably May of --
9 MRS. SELEWSKI: Well, it's not in July -- or May 10 of --
11 MR. POARCH: May of '94.
12 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- '94.
13 - Were those actions taken against -- or taken 14 because Mr. Hallenbeck had voiced concerns --
15 MR. POARCH: No.
16 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- to you or to anyone else that 17 you're aware of?
18 MR. POARCH: No.
19 MRS. SELEWSKI: When was it that you first 20 learned that he was voicing some concerns about you and 21 intimidation or harassment or any type of different 22 treatment? Was that back when he discussed with you, hey, 23 buddy, you're harassing me? Was that when you first 24 became aware of him --
25 MR. POARCH: No. I think he had been to see
76 1 Andy DeSoiza prior to that. And that's when I became ,
2 aware of it.
3 MRS. SELEWSKI: When you first visited Andy's 4 office about some of the concerns is when you became aware 5 of it?
6 MR. POARCH: Uh-huh.
7 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. Mr. Poarch, have you had 8 training related to employees' rights to voice safety 9 concerns --
10 MR. POARCH: Yes.
11 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- at a nuclear plant?
12 MR. POARCH: Abso '.utely .
13 MRS. SELEWSKI: When do you remember the -- Is 14 that something regular that you have here, or was that 15 something when you first started?
16 MR. POARCH: No. That's a refresher at least 17 once a year here.
18 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. And what do they discuss l 19 during that training? Is this something that they bring a
! 20 group in and talk about that?
21 MR. POARCH: Yes. You're informed that the 22 employee has a concern. You encourage them to see their 23 supervisors, but if they don't want to, they can go to the 24 department head, to the vice president, or they can go to 25 the NRC without any reprisal against the employee.
n i
. . . . _ _ _ . . _ = _ . _ . . _ . - . _ . _ _ . _ _ _ _ . -
I J
77 j 1 And that's at least at a minimum once a year. In 2 fact, we had put posters around in different places so
. 3 they -- they'd have your phone number and how to get in 1-
? 4- touch with.
5 MRS. SELEWSKI: Okay. While Mr. Hallenbeck was
- 6 under your supervision did you at any time intimidate,
! 7 harass because he had voiced safety concerns --
8 MR. POARCH: No.
9 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- over this whole period?
]
1 10 MR. POARCH: No.
11 MRS. SELEWSKI: We'll go off the record for a
) 12 moment.
j 13 (Whereupon, these proceedings went off the record
- 14 briefly, after which the following proceedings were had
- )
} 15 MRS. SELEWSKI: We're back on the record.
- 16 We touched on this before, Mr. Poarch, about l 17 welding codes and requirements.
T
- 18 Did you ever compromise welding code requirements j 19 by asking Mr. Hallenbeck to take a shortcut or to continue i 20 welding?
l j 21 We did discuss this, but I want to get this'in 22 general on record. Intentionally or --
23 MR. POARCH: No.
24 MRS. SELEWSKIi Do you have anything you want to
- 25 add? Did I miss anything regarding your side of the story ;
i j
i
-r . , ,. , e , . , = .. ,,. -
78 l i
1 related to Mr. Hallenbeck's concerns?
2 MR. POARCH: No.
3 MRS. SELEWSKI: Do you want to summarize 4 anything as to why actions were taken in the way that they 5 were related to Mr. Hallenbeck?
6 MR. POARCH: No.
7 MRS. SELEWSKI: So these actions that were 8 taken, in your mind, were they personnel related --
9 MR. POARCH: Correct.
10 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- and not related to voicing 11 safety concerns? l 1
12 MR. POARCH: No. They were -- That's correct.
13 Taey were strictly personnel related, how to make 14 Mr. Hallenbeck a-more useful part of the organization, and 15 get along with people.
16 MRS. SELEWSKI: Did you feel that he did have j 17 some contributions in the welding department -- )
18 MR. POARCH: Yes, he did.
19 MRS. SELEWSKI: -- related to his skills and his 20 expertise?
21 MR. POARCH: Yes. He was very familiar with the 22 welding codes, with our welding manual. And we never had 23 a question about his technical ability. He could have 24 been a valuable menber of the team.
25 MRS. SELEWSKI: Anything else that you want to
- _ .