One of Obama's Social Security Slasher Wannabes Threatens Small Town with Nuclear Annihilation
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.
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.
In a major concession, the uranium workers' union refused to go on strike, out of concern for the safety of their complex and dangerous facility. To keep the plant safe, the union agreed to continue working under an extension of its current contract. But that didn't satisfy Honeywell, which is already making record profits. It decided it could make even more if it played hardball with its workers, risking a nuclear disaster.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/148044/one_of_obama%27s_social_security_slasher_wannabes_threatens_small_town_with_nuclear_annihilation/?page=entireOn edit, related story referred to me by another DUer:
Nuclear Regulators Prohibit Honeywell to Resume Production at Facility With Locked-Out Workers
Mike Elk
September 2, 2010When 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 according to local workers. 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 claims union official John Paul Smith.
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 has not allowed the plant to resume production of UF6 according to local community and union sources. Local community and union officials claim that 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 informed local community and union officials that they would not allow it because on Aug. 25 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. Neither the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or Honeywell could be reached for comment to confirm the claims of local community members and union officials.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-elk/nuclear-regulators-close_b_704023.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
