Lawsuit Claims Former BP Employee Was Fired For Refusing To Skew Clean-Up Data

[highplainsdem]

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/lawsuit_claims_former_bp_employee_was_fired_for_re.php

A former employee of BP America is suing the oil company for wrongful termination, alleging that he was canned for refusing to alter data about the progress of the clean-up of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

In a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Louisiana, August Walter asks for damages over his termination from BP, where he was employed for about a year as part of the Gulf Coast clean-up. Walter served under BP’s Gulf Coast Restoration Organization (GCRO) as State Planning Lead “for the purpose of developing a descriptive plan to accomplish the cleaning of oil caused by the BP spill.”

-snip-

Shortly after, Walter claims that “BP began a malicious campaign to discredit him in retaliation for his opposition to BP refusal to reasonably follow environmental rules and regulations.” At one point, Walter says, he was called in for a meeting with the VP of Operations who said that the “focus was to have the [Coast Guard] be confident in BP” so that they could more quickly transition to a new plan for clean-up and oversight that would be beneficial to BP stock prices. Walter claims he was “specifically threatened” and told that there were “people watching him” that would report him if he continued to hinder BP’s plans.

Walter also claims that following a Deep Dive to assess the clean-up’s progress, BP’s Operations Section Chief Mike Harrison said he “did not like the data as to Mississippi because as he stated ‘it did not fit with the story’ he wanted to tell” the Coast Guard. “[Harrison] specifically — without back-up data — insisted that the amount of segments that needed to be cleaned had to be lower than the data was showing.”

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[raouldukelives]

1. He doesn't understand fiduciary responsibility.

The shareholders (owners) must be protected at all costs and will be. That's the great thing about 401k's. They allow the ownership to be spread out over millions of people. They envision a whole country, nay, a world vested tightly with the stock market. Where your money silently votes for you to condone, continue and expand these types of practices until every last dollar has been extracted from the earth and left it as a stinking, rotting corpse for future generations to try to salvage or surely suffer.

[MountainLaurel]

2. And people wonder

Why I still refuse to eat Gulf seafood or take my dogs to the beach.

[yardwork]

3. K&R.