Shipyard Safety Warnings Go Unheeded, Workers Claim

Gary C. Woods watched helplessly as his gloved hand caught in the heavy rollers of a metal-bending machine at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard last year.

“The next thing I realized was I could hear my fingers cracking,” said Woods, a welder who was helping out in a shipyard machine shop at the time. “I put it in reverse and pulled my hand out.”

It was too late. Woods said the index and middle fingers on his right hand were crushed. The tip of the index finger was amputated hours after the accident.

Six years before, Dannie V. Rios was stamping out flanges on a shipyard punch press. The punch unexpectedly activated while Rios’ right hand was underneath, severing two fingers and leaving a third dangling. He lost all three.

“I can’t even describe the pain,” Rios said. “The pain was just excruciating.”

Hundreds of Accidents

While hundreds of industrial accidents have occurred in recent years at the 5,100-worker shipyard, the maimings of Woods and Rios are among the most serious. Both were injured on machines that allegedly lacked operator guards in violation of federal safety regulations.

Two past workers and one current employee charge that shipyard managers ignored numerous warnings that might have prevented those and other accidents.

For more than a year, the three men said, they warned yard safety officials about unguarded machines, electrical shock hazards and other unsafe practices. But they said their complaints were either sloughed off or treated as petty gripes motivated by their labor union affiliations.

Shipyard spokesman Gilbert Bond denied that managers turned a deaf ear to any complaints, even though the Naval inspector general slapped the yard with an unsatisfactory safety rating earlier this year upon finding that workers were exposed to more hazardous conditions than those at any of the nation’s seven other government-owned yards.

Bond acknowledged that the yard has had safety problems, but insisted that the expansive facility on Terminal Island has never been an unsafe place to work. Bond said the yard has recently spent more than $500,000 installing guards on hundreds of industrial machines in a program that is 80% complete.

But safety records and shipyard memos obtained by The Times confirm that the concerns expressed by the three workers were echoed in critical reports from the inspector general and the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration.

Skeptical Reaction

The records also indicate that on several occasions shipyard managers reacted skeptically to their complaints.

“They (shipyard managers) were not doing annual inspections and nothing was getting fixed,” said Jack Podojil, the yard’s former training and audit program manager.

In making the safety complaints, Podojil joined Don Nelson, former business agent for the Asbestos Workers Union Local 20, and Joe Walsh, safety chairman for the shipyard’s International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2293.

Podojil said he became a steward for the International Federation of Technical Engineers only after being stymied in attempts to clean up shipyard safety problems. But the three workers insist that their only motivation was to make the yard safer.

Nelson, in fact, was thanked in a February, 1987, memorandum from then-shipyard commander, Navy Capt. George E. Fink, for “your concern regarding our working conditions.” Yet when Nelson filed a complaint eight months later about an unsafe practice, the reply from the yard’s safety office had a notably harsher tone.

Nelson complained that a ship’s gangway, suspended from a crane, was being used as a work platform by several employees who had not taken the required safety precautions. In San Diego, six workers were killed and another six injured last year when they fell from a crane basket at National Steel & Shipbuilding Co.

The Long Beach shipyard’s safety staff agreed that Nelson’s complaint was legitimate and immediately ordered a halt to the dangerous practice. Instead of being thanked, however, Nelson was criticized by one inspector for formally complaining to the safety office rather than asking a dockside supervisor to handle the problem.

Safety Director Lynn Bettencourt scrawled on the official reply that “Nelson’s efforts detract from our (office’s) efforts and do appear to be for the sake of harassment.”

When asked about the incident this week, Bond issued a statement acknowledging that “in itself, Mr. Nelson’s submission of an employee hazard report was proper and correct.” But by failing to immediately contact a supervisor, he said, Nelson prolonged a dangerous situation. Bond said that Bettencourt’s comments “were written with some frustration.”

Nelson quit his shipyard job in January to become an OSHA inspector.

Two Commended

Walsh and Podojil were also commended--and even given cash awards--in August, 1987, for compiling a safety training schedule. But both workers said they encountered harsh resistence when they tried to warn managers about unsafe practices.

For example, Walsh formally complained last October when managers hung warning signs on several unguarded machines instead of taking them out of service. The signs read, “Caution. Unguarded machine. To be operated by authorized personnel only.”

Rather than addressing Walsh’s complaint, a safety official merely accused him of improperly filling out the complaint form.

Bond acknowledged this week that the “safety office reply to Mr. Walsh was inappropriate.” But Bond said the deficient machines did not need to be taken out of service because the signs provided a sufficient warning. He added that shipyard managers do not consider unguarded machines to constitute “an immediate and high potential safety hazard.” Bond said that no employee is ever forced to work on machine they consider unsafe.

Walsh still works at the shipyard.

No Operator Guards

On another occasion, Podojil noticed that many workers were using powerful grinders that lacked operator guards. Podojil’s supervisor reported the observation to Safety Director Bettencourt in October, 1986.

Bettencourt responded by accusing Podojil--an OSHA inspector before he joined the shipyard in 1986--of having “an OSHA-bred tendency for megalomania” and of being “a loose cannon,” according to a shipyard memo obtained by The Times. Bettencourt said in the memo that workers were allowed to remove the guards under certain conditions so they could more easily operate the machines.

Podojil then complained anonymously to the OSHA office in Long Beach, which in turn asked shipyard managers why the grinders had not been guarded. Bettencourt replied in January, 1987, that the grinders were equipped with guards when workers checked them out, and he blamed workers for having removed them.

” . . . Investigation in the Prop (propeller) Shop indicates unauthorized removal of guards is all too common place,” Bettencourt wrote.

Bond said last week that since workers take several special safety precautions when they use a grinder without a guard, “the OSHA requirement was met. . . . “

Podojil resigned late last year to become a safety engineer at Garrett AiResearch in Torrance.

Records show that shipyard managers also reacted slowly to safety problems pointed out by OSHA in September, 1986.

Wrote to Commander

In June, 1987, OSHA Acting Regional Administrator James W. Lake wrote to then-shipyard commander Fink:

“It has been over seven months since you were made aware of these violations. Nineteen violations of safety standards still remain unabated and ten of these have no abatement date at all. Based on the information we have, we are forced to conclude that abatement efforts are less than satisfactory,” Lake’s letter stated. OSHA officials said the shipyard has since complied with all the shortcomings cited in their inspections.

Besides OSHA, the yard was subjected to internal surveys. Podojil said that he and another inspector had noted the same unguarded metal-rolling machine that soon after crushed the fingers of welder Woods. Nelson, Walsh and Podojil said recently that they each saw the machine after the accident and it was still unguarded. Shipyard spokesman Bond, however, said the machine had the proper guards.

Woods, now temporarily assigned to the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, said he was unaware of any guards on the machine. He said he had been sent to the sheet metal shop last September when the workload slacked off in his area. He was given about five minutes of instruction on the use of a metal-rolling machine, which has a powerful set of cylinders that resemble rolling pins. But Woods, 28, did not recall ever being admonished about not wearing gloves while using the machine. Welders commonly wear gloves to prevent cuts on jagged edges of sheet metal.

On the day of the accident, Woods said he was having trouble feeding a foot-long piece of metal into the machine. As he moved his hand closer to shove the metal through, his gloves caught in the rollers.

“The next thing I knew my hand was in it,” he said. “I don’t know how the hell it happened.”

Suing Switch Firm

Meanwhile, Rios, a sheet metal mechanic and nine-year employee, is suing the company that made the control switches on the machine that maimed him. He has already settled with the maker of the punch press and is precluded by federal law from suing the shipyard.

The first trial in Norwalk Superior Court in May ended in a hung jury. A second trial is scheduled to start in January.

Los Angeles attorney Joseph Steele, who representes Rios, said recently that a barrier guard or other guarding arrangement could have saved his client’s three fingers.

Steele said he believes shipyard managers, in addition to the manufacturers, were at fault for failing to install machine guards.

Like Woods, Rios said the 1981 accident occurred so fast he remembers little about it. After being injured, Rios said he endured a painful nine-month recuperation. At first, he struggled to hold a cup or a pencil. He is learning to brush his teeth left-handed. And he has had to give up activities such as playing racquetball.

The 30-year-old Garden Grove resident said he has nothing but praise for his fellow workers and the yard managers. All of them were supportive after the accident. He said yard safety has improved significantly in recent months.

“The guys took care of me,” he said. “Everybody there has helped me.”