Lockheed Vows to Fight All 440 OSHA Charges : Firm Will Also Challenge $1.5 Million in Fines Levied Against Burbank Plant

Lockheed said Thursday that it will fight all 440 allegations of worker-safety violations that federal officials have lodged against the aerospace giant’s Burbank plant, whose projects include the top-secret stealth fighter jet.

Lockheed also plans to contest $1.5 million in fines that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration said the company should pay because of the alleged violations, which OSHA announced March 24. The proposed fines were the largest since OSHA took over enforcement of job safety and health laws in California from state officials in July, 1987.

OSHA alleged that Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co., the division that runs the Burbank operations, mislabeled or failed to label chemical containers, failed to post mandatory health warnings to workers and kept poor records of which workers became sick or injured at the plant.

Called ‘Willful’

OSHA also asserted that 341 of the 440 alleged violations were “willful,” which, under OSHA’s rules, means that Lockheed either knew that a work site condition was a violation or was aware that an unsafe condition existed and made “no reasonable effort” to fix it.

However, Lockheed Aeronautical President Kenneth Cannestra, in a letter sent to employees Thursday, said “we at LASC object strongly to the characterization of any of the alleged violations as being ‘willful.’

“It has always been Lockheed’s intent to comply with all safety and health regulations,” Cannestra said. “We will continue to cooperate fully with OSHA and other regulatory agencies to ensure the safety and health of our employees.”

The company had 15 working days to respond to the findings. During that period, Lockheed and OSHA held informal talks that might have led to a settlement of the allegations, but “we weren’t able to resolve the matter in that time,” said Frank Gravitt, OSHA’s regional director in Los Angeles.

Lockheed, which is based in Calabasas, will now formally contest the allegations before an administrative law judge of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission in Washington. If either side appeals the judge’s ruling, the case will be decided by the three-member commission, Gravitt said.

Complaints Triggered Probe

Gravitt said he did not know exactly when the case will be heard but said it is likely to be between two months and a year from now.

OSHA cited Lockheed after a four-month investigation of some of its 200 buildings in Burbank. The probe was triggered by workers’ complaints that they became ill from working with chemicals and other hazardous materials at the plant and that they were not adequately protected from the materials or told of the danger.

Some of the materials are believed to be involved in making “composites”--lightweight yet strong fibrous materials that are increasingly used in aircraft construction. Composites are particularly useful for radar-evading stealth airplanes because the materials do not reflect radar waves as easily as metal-bodied jets, making them more difficult to detect.

OSHA is continuing to investigate Lockheed. In announcing the citations three weeks ago, OSHA said it also sent inspectors back for a “wall-to-wall” inspection of Lockheed’s entire Burbank operations, which employ 14,000 people overall.

Lockheed is also defending itself against several civil suits that have been filed since 1986 by about 90 current and former employees, who also alleged that they became ill while working at the Burbank plant.

Some of the employees have contended that the OSHA citations, if upheld, would buttress their lawsuits. Lockheed spokesman James Ragsdale said last week that “it seems possible” that OSHA’s report could be introduced into court, but he declined to speculate on how it might affect the outcome of the suits.