Wickes Confirms Firing of Workers in Carpet Incident

A director of Wickes Cos. acknowledged Thursday that “fairly low-level” employees of the company’s Collins & Aikman unit were fired after the company found they routinely submitted false safety test results to some carpet customers.

The test results were for carpet samples unrelated to products that were actually shipped, he said. Some of the carpet sent to customers has since been found not to meet local safety codes.

“I don’t know what motivated them,” said Edmund M. Kaufman, a senior partner for the Los Angeles law firm of Irell & Manella and the Wickes director investigating irregularities at Collins & Aikman’s floor covering division in Dalton, Ga. “It isn’t like they were on some kind of bonus tied to production or sales. . . . They were just making up the samples and sending them off to the lab.

“For the most part, the ones dismissed admitted what they did. We treated them as employees who had done something really wrong. We told them in no uncertain terms that what they had done was wrong.”

So far, four or five employees have been fired and an equal number suspended, Kaufman said. He added that he is not aware of any charges having been filed but said, “I think it’s entirely possible” that legal action will be taken against some of the employees. The employees’ names have not been disclosed.

Kaufman’s investigation follows an announcement by Wickes on April 15 that Collins & Aikman had sold an undetermined amount of carpet that did not meet some flammability standards. The company at the time said it did not know the extent of the problem.

“Certainly, this wasn’t in accordance with Collins & Aikman’s corporate policy, much less Wickes’,” Kaufman said Thursday. “I have no evidence of anyone at corporate headquarters knowing anything of this.” He also said there is no evidence of improper payments to employees who were dismissed.

Kaufman said the company is still contacting customers to determine the scope of the problem.

Wickes’ stock, near $4 before the announcement, has fallen but recovered somewhat Thursday, rising 12 1/2 cents a share to $3.50 on the American Stock Exchange.

In a telephone conversation from Washington, where he had briefed officials of the General Services Administration, a big Collins & Aikman customer, Kaufman also acknowledged that the carpet company first learned of its problem from Florida school officials who conducted independent tests. Those results showed that Collins & Aikman carpeting in a new elementary school did not meet newly revised specifications.

In March, after those samples were found to be wide of the mark on flammability and smoke density tests, school officials contacted Collins & Aikman. The company “quickly discovered that it was not just a defective shipment, but that (the problem) was widespread, that there were instances where employees submitted sample results unrelated to the products shipped,” Kaufman said.

Collins & Aikman has removed the carpeting from the Pinellas County, Fla. school, and plans to replace it in early June.