A union busting CEO on Obama's Deficit Commission is willing to risk nuclear fallout in a town

[Better Believe It]

David Cote is so dangerous he's willing to risk nuclear fallout in order to force uranium workers to cut their retiree health care and pension plans.
By Mike Elk
September 1, 2010

A lot of attention has recently been focused on one of President Barack Obama's top advisers on the Federal Debt Commission -- Former Senator Alan Simpson, R-WY. Simpson has generated justifiable outrage for describing Social Security as "a milk cow with 310 million tits." But Simpson isn't the only unhinged fanatic on Obama's Debt Commission. One man, in particular, stands out as far more sinister, and he was hand-picked for the Commission post by Obama himself.

Meet Honeywell CEO David Cote -- perhaps the most dangerous man in America. So dangerous that he's willing to risk nuclear fallout in order to demand that uranium workers agree to cut their retiree health care and pension plans.

Honeywell runs the only conversion facility in the world that can distill pure uranium, located in Metropolis, Illinois. On June 28, Honeywell locked out its union workers during contract negotiations because the union, United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7-669, refused to accept the company's proposal to eliminate retiree health care and pension plans for new hires and increase workers' out-of-pocket health care to $8,500 a year. Good health care coverage for retirees is especially important to uranium workers, who suffer rates of cancer 10 times higher than the general public due to their daily interaction with radioactive material. It's easy to see why the workers would refuse to give in to demands to eliminate retiree health care coverage.

So Honeywell's executives locked out the local uranium workers, who have decades of experience operating a hazardous uranium enrichment facility. Instead, Honeywell hired hastily trained scabs (replacement workers) to run the plant. Honeywell uranium worker John Paul Smith described the plan to run the plant on poorly trained scab labor as "a serious gamble." The Metropolis uranium plant is the only uranium enrichment facility in the world that can distill pure uranium, and it would be impossible to train workers fully on how to run such a complex facility in a matter of days or weeks.

Please read the full article at:

http://www.alternet.org/economy/148044/one_of_obama%27s_social_security_slasher_wannabes_threatens_small_town_with_nuclear_annihilation/?page=entire




Steelworkers Rally for Locked-Out Nuclear Workers

Read the article at:

http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/08/12/steelworkers-rally-fo...

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Morris! Come and get your din-din!

[Omaha Steve]

2. Great post K&R! Mike's follow up to his story

Mike's follow up email. I have permission to post this in it's entirety!


Spoke with officials on the ground in Illinois earlier today. This is a breaking story.

When I originally wrote about Honeywell CEO David Cote threatening the safety of a small town by bringing in under-trained "scabs" (replacement workers )to run a uranium enrichment facility in Metropolis, IL, some contacted me saying they doubted the safety concerns I cited were as serious. The plant is currently being operated on a skeleton crew of managers and hired scabs who are indeed under-trained.

The Metropolis facility is the only conversion facility in the world that can distill uranium. While the scab workers Honeywell brought in from Louisiana have worked in nuclear facilities, they haven't worked on the process that converts uranium from the somewhat toxic UF4 solid state to the extraordinarily more lethal liquid UF6. For the process of converting uranium to UF6, Honeywell is hoping to use its managers who used to work on these processes years ago. In addition to not having worked these jobs in years and, as a result, being generally unfamiliar with them, the managers are liable to be especially unprepared to deal with the conversion plant's control system, which has been altered dramatically in the last few years.

Currently, the workers running the plant are unfamiliar with the system they are using and unfamiliar with the processes. This is a uranium enrichment facility from which even the slightest leak of UF6 could wipe out the entire town.

For this reason, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has not allowed the plant to resume production of UF6. Honeywell is currently using all the political connections it can to force the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to re-open it.


Honeywell originally said they would start up production of the deadly UF6 on Wednesday, however, Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors would not allow it. The Nuclear Regulatory Inspectors would not allow it because on August 25th a round of urine tests on workers showed an unusually high amount of uranium in workers' urine. The workers were not permitted to return to working with the uranium.

Since uranium sometimes builds up in the blood stream of workers working around it for years, the high levels of uranium in the workers' urine was not, in itself, unusual. None of the workers who was tested, however, had ever been tested for high levels of uranium, which meant they had been contaminated with the uranium since the last round of testing earlier this summer. More shockingly, one of the inspectors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had unusually high levels of uranium in his urine tests.

CEO David Cote, a member of the President's deficit commission, is directly responsible for the safety hazards occurring under his watch at the Metropolis facility.

Degrading safety under the leadership of Honeywell CEO David Cote has been a top concern of workers over the last few years. Under the management of David Cote, the TOP safety programs of union-management safety committee have been disbanded. Under the TOP system, each incident was investigated jointly by a full-time union representative and a full-time company representative, who each filed an independent report on the matter. Because the union's workers would suffer the most from toxic uranium exposure, it had the biggest incentive to make sure the plant was safe, and thus, often wrote tougher reports than the company. For this reason TOP was disbanded.

In place of TOP, Honeywell implemented its own profit-centered program of behavioral safety, without the workers' input. If there was a problem or a leak, a worker was deemed responsible and disciplined for that problem even if it occurred because of aging equipment. If a worker reported a problem in their section, he was often cited for misconduct and liable to be fired. One worker who reported a routine problem was fired after 30 years of experience and no prior record of safety violations. The threat of firing workers for reporting safety problems actually creates a disincentive for workers to report problems.

Workers claim that Honeywell CEO David Cote is far more interested in keeping his record profits high than actually protecting workers and the surrounding community. During contract negotiations, Cote has proven this by risking nuclear fallout in order to demand that uranium workers agree to cut their retiree health care and pension plans.

That is why today, the 350,000 members of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees called on President Obama to fire Honeywell CEO David Cote from the so-called Deficit Commission. They said:

Mr. Cote's cruel and calculated behavior towards workers at its hexafluoride plant in Metropolis, Ill. clearly illustrates that he's unqualified and inappropriate to help decide issues such as whether to reduce the federal deficit by cutting programs like social security or by upgrading the faulty military contracting process, from which Honeywell benefits.


Mr. Cote should be evicted from the so-called Deficit Commission immediately before he can use that position to harm all Americans the way he is injuring Honeywell workers in Illinois.

Since Honeywell CEO David Cote is one of President Obama's personal appointments to the Deficit Commission, it falls upon the President to decide whether or not a man of Cote's character should be deciding the fate of Social Security.



--
Mike Elk

[Bobbieo]

3. I have come to the conclusion that uranium In Any Form is a danger

to human health and well being. When will we learn!!!!

[sabrina 1]

9. He and Simpson should both be removed from the Commission.

If he really did this, I think the word for him is insane.

[indepat]

4. Say what you must, but this fella and Simpson were especially hand-picked for this hatchet

job for it were known they would get the job done, damn the facts, damn what's right and wrong, damn the damage done, damn the torpedoes of expressed rage over their handi-work. :P

[Lost4words]

8. I wish I felt as if my party won, I thought it had. nt

[Little Star]

5. k&r

[Better Believe It]

6. Accidental gas releases at the Honeywell uranium plant

In Superman’s Hometown, a Labor Dispute Over Health
By Dan Frosch
August 8, 2010


Workers have long feared that the plant poses dangers. According to Honeywell’s quarterly financial filings, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department are investigating whether the plant complied with federal law in its storage of sludge. A grand jury has been convened in the matter, the filings said.

Mr. Dalpe said Honeywell was cooperating with the E.P.A. investigation, “which resulted from a company self-disclosure more than two years ago.”

Federal inspectors have been on-site monitoring the situation, said Roger Hannah, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “At this point, we’re satisfied they’ve met all safety regulations, and that they have a continued emphasis on safety,” he said.

In December 2003, an accidental release of uranium hexafluoride sent a plume of gas into the air, and nearby homes were evacuated. The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency sued Honeywell over the accident, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued two safety violations, which led to increased oversight.



Crosses symbolize workers at the uranium conversion plant who have died from cancer.

Read the full article at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/us/09metropolis.html

[Faryn Balyncd]

7. This fellow has no business crafting fiscal policy. K&R.

[TBF]

10. But, but, but he gives big campaign donations. nt

[Gabi Hayes]

11. he can afford it:

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/news/0904/gallery.biggest_ceo_paychecks/9.html

Total compensation: $28.7 million

2008 salary: $1.8 million
Bonus: $17.5 million
Perks: $422,666
Stock grants: $0
Stock options: $9 million