Northwest labor press., April 21, 2017, Page 14, Image 14

PAGE 14 | April 21, 2017 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
...At Abhe & Svoboda, those who complain about safety don’t last
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back. He told some co-workers that he’d
called OSHA, and he thinks word got
back to management.
“They were on me about every little
thing,” Luey says. “They were watching
me, bird-dogging me.”
Soon, he got two write-ups for a photo
posted on Facebook by his son Shane
Luey Jr., who was also working for Abhe
& Svoboda under the Ross Island
Bridge. The photo showed the two of
them standing on a cross-brace above the
Willamette River. Shane Luey Sr. was
written up for taking a picture on the job
and because the picture showed him not
wearing a safety harness — both of
which violated company rules.
In the end, the company didn’t have to
fire Shane Luey Sr.; they just declined to
hold his job for him after he broke his
collarbone in an off-the-job accident July
4. His son, Shane Luey Jr., was fired in
November, ostensibly for violating a new
rule prohibiting talking on the job.
On Feb. 8, 2017, eight months after
Luey Sr. warned OSHA about unsafe
scaffolding, Marco Montello fell 40 feet
from a scaffold under the bridge and
landed on his son Christopher, who was
on a lower level. Both were hospitalized
after a fire department ladder rescue.
Luey says he decided to go public with
his story after hearing about the accident.
“When I heard it on the news, I really
got pissed off about it. If they would have
handled this when I called OSHA, it
probably wouldn’t have happened,”
Luey said.
At least three other OSHA complaints
have been filed on Abhe & Svoboda’s
Ross Island Bridge project. And other for-
mer Abhe & Svoboda employees echo
Luey’s description of an employer openly
disregarding safety — in interviews and
written statements provided to govern-
ment agencies and to Painters and Allied
Trades District Council 5. The union has
been investigating Abhe & Svoboda to
find out how the company was able to un-
derbid a unionized contractor by $11 mil-
lion.
Fired after talking (about safety)
An Abhe & Svoboda employee who
asked to be identified only by his initials,
D.R., said he remembers very well the
safety meeting at which Luey was threat-
ened by management.
“Everybody on the whole project
heard it,” he says.
With 23 years experience in marine
painting, D.R. was hired by Abhe & Svo-
boda in March 2016, and served as paint
foreman on the Ross Island job until No-
vember 2016, when he was replaced by
a relative of the project manager. D.R.
was demoted to painter.
“There was constant discussion about
the way we were doing things, and that
people were going to get hurt,” D.R. re-
calls.
“I’m not going to sign that. … You’re retaliating
against me because I engaged in concerted and
protected activity.”
— Omar Rubi
D.R. says by about November, the
company was behind schedule. Man-
agers began pushing workers to go faster,
and imposed a “no-talking-on-the-job”
policy on the project. D.R. says he told
his co-worker Shane Luey Jr. that the
speedup was going to cause an accident;
someone would fall from the scaffolding.
Their conversation was within earshot of
the new foreman. The next day, D.R. was
told there was no work for him. Two days
later the project superintendent gave him
his last check, and an explanation: “He
didn’t need me up there yapping when I
was supposed to be working,” D.R. said.
Fired after filing an OSHA complaint
The next worker to be terminated after
raising a safety complaint was Tywan
Brown — according to a sworn statement
she submitted Feb. 28 to the Oregon Bu-
reau of Labor and Industries (BOLI). In
the statement, Brown said she traveled
from Virginia to work on the Ross Island
Bridge as a sandblaster starting Nov. 7.
One month in, she injured her hand and
arm on the job, and was assigned to light
duty. On Jan. 27, she filed an anonymous
complaint with Oregon OSHA. The com-
plaint lists numerous safety concerns, in-
cluding: injuries going unreported; that
workers were working in unsafe weather
conditions and falling while working on
a platform in freezing rain; and that work-
ers on light duty were still doing tasks that
could cause further injury. She was termi-
nated Feb. 2, 2017, after a conversation
with Abhe & Svoboda safety manager
Thurman London in which he suggested
her injury had been caused by non-work
activities. She was also accused by a
company manager of being “guilty” of
filing the OSHA complaint. Afterward, a
company manager interviewed a co-
worker, her roommate, about her com-
plaint to OSHA.
Fired after telling co-workers they
could speak up about safety
Omar Rubi is a union organizer with
Painters District Council 5 who got hired
on at Abhe & Svoboda’s Ross Island
Bridge project. But the company didn’t
know that — until Rubi came out as a
“union salt” in a Feb. 15 article in the
Northwest Labor Press.
Like other workers, Rubi raised safety
issues. In fact, on Feb. 7, the day before
Marco Martello’s 40-foot fall, Rubi at-
tended a safety meeting at which a man-
ager told workers that if they have safety
concerns, they should come to manage-
ment, not to talk to each other or to gov-
ernment agencies about them. In front of
his co-workers, Rubi objected, saying
that they have a right under federal law
to talk to each other, and to government
agencies, about safety concerns.
“First thing they do after our employee
meeting, they call me in the trailer and
Thurman [the safety manager] says,
‘Here, I need you to sign this,’” Rubi re-
calls. “And I’m like, ‘What’s this?’ He
goes, ‘It’s a write up for not wearing your
harness.’ I’m like, ‘No, I’m not going to
sign that. …You’re retaliating against me
because I engaged in concerted and pro-
tected activity.’”
At the end of his shift, Rubi says he
was told not to come in the next day —
though he had worked on the project five
days a week since July 16, 2016. Rubi
continued to call in, only to be told there
was no work for him. On Feb. 16, he was
called back.
“The first thing they had me do was
pull me into the trailer, and Thurman has
a write-up for me, for not wearing a har-
ness.” Again he refused to sign it, and
was terminated.
What kind of a safety officer disci-
plines workers for safety violations after
they complain about safety?
It turns out Thurman London used to
be a federal OSHA compliance officer,
in Denver — until he was indicted, con-
victed and sentenced for theft of govern-
ment property. According to a 1997 re-
port from the inspector general of the
U.S. Department of Labor, London ab-
sconded with an OSHA government-
owned vehicle, eight camcorders and
other office equipment, and used a gov-
ernment-issued credit card to make about
$15,000 in unauthorized personal pur-
chases, including clothes, restaurant
meals, and car rentals. He later repaid
$13,192 to the government, and his wife
repaid $850.
Company-wide
Safety problems at Abhe & Svoboda
aren’t limited to Thurman London, or to
the Ross Island Bridge project.
Orvin Dean, a member of Portland-
based Painters Local 10, worked for
Abhe & Svoboda in New Jersey and
Florida three years ago, and says workers
didn’t wear safety gear as required: “A
few times I tried to put on my harness
and [a company foreman] told me the
company doesn’t have time for you to
walk from Point A to Point B just so you
can put on your harness.”
OSHA has cited and fined Abhe &
Svoboda more than a dozen times at proj-
ects around the nation, including nearly
$30,000 for dozens of violations on the
Astoria Bridge in 2011. To publicize the
company’s violations of safety and other
labor laws, the Painters District Council
5 put together a web site, abhe-
exposed.com, which went live April 11.
But Rubi is concerned Oregon OSHA
may go easy on the company.
“I’ve been sending OSHA pictures of
guys not using harnesses on the scaffold,”
Rubi said. “They just don’t seem inter-
ested. It’s almost like they don’t care.…
When somebody comes to me with some-
thing important I jump on it; I behave a
certain way. They’re not doing that.”
ONLINE EXTRA
See video from the Portland Fire Bureau’s bridge
rescue of injured workers, and a detailed record
of Abhe & Svoboda’s safety and labor law viola-
tions, at http://abhe-exposed.com