Huffington Post: Honeywell Bosses Coached Scabs Through Safety Test at Uranium Plant

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-elk/honeywell-cheated-on-scab_b_786913.html

Mike Elk

Labor Journalist
Posted: November 22, 2010 01:08 PM


Temporary workers taking the place of locked-out union employees at a uranium enrichment plant in Illinois appear to be woefully unprepared to run the sensitive facility and were coached through recent safety checks, according to a reading of the inspection report. The scab workers, who the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has repeatedly warned have substandard qualifications to run such a plant, took safety tests with managers present who identified parts. And the workers were able to watch other workers take the test before taking it themselves and often provided with answers ahead of time, according to a report filed by NRC Inspector Joselito O. Calle.

According to NRC Inspector Calle's publicly available report:

"the inspectors noted that evaluator coached the candidate several times during task performance and therefor did not allow the candidate to completely demonstrates his ability to demonstrate his ability to independently perform the task For example: 1.) the evaluator provided coaching when he showed the candidate the locations of several components when the candidate was unable to locate them. 2.) the evaluator coached the candidate when the evaluator showed the candidate where the candidate was in the procedure and, 3) the evaluation coached the candidate when the evaluator helped the candidate follow the procedure." NRC Inspector Calle cites these violations as well providing scab workes with copies of test material and allowing them to observe the tests as violations of NRC License Condition No. 18 (VIO 40-3392/2010-002-01).

The less than impressive test results come after an operator error nearly led to massive fatalities in the surrounding town of Metropolis, when a safety valve damaged by failure to follow proper safety procedure burst sending out particles of deadly toxic UF6 gas. According to former Honeywell environmental safety officer Mitch Lagerstorm, the gas leak, had it not been stopped in time, could have killed the nearby town.

For the first time in more than 60 years, Honeywell's uranium enrichment facility in Metropolis, Illinois is locking out its workers and running the plant with scab employees. The plant's owners have never been allowed to bring in temporary replacement workers in the past, because regulators feared such workers would not have the site-specific knowledge to operate this facility. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) officials told union members and community members in town halls leading up to the current lock-out that they thought it would be very difficult for safety reasons to open the plant without the normal team of fully-trained union workers.

In fact, the NRC did not allow the plant to recommence production of the deadly toxic UF6 gas for over two months from the time Honeywell's ongoing lock-out of the plant workers began. Finally, after much pressure from Honeywell, the NRC approved the re-opening of the plant. Since then, there has been a large explosion, leaks of non-toxic gas, and urine tests indicating extraordinarily high level of uranium flowing through the replacement workers, as HuffPost previously documented here.

Questions linger as to why the NRC took the unprecedented step of allowing the plant to operate on scab labor. Honeywell CEO David Cote's has an extremely close relationship with President Obama; Honeywell is the number one corporate political contributor to the Democratic Party. It has increased its political contributions by 400% since Obama took office in 2008. President Obama has routinely described Honeywell CEO David Cote as one of his closest advisers in the business community. Cote recently accompanied Obama on a trip to India and was the President's pick to serve on the Bowles-Simpson Fiscal Commission.

The NRC has traditionally been an industry-friendly regulatory agency. Jim Riccio of Greenpeace says that "the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to the nuclear industry what the Mine & Mineral Services was to BP. "

FULL story at link.