'Mr. Safety' goes to the mat

RICHLAND -- Randy Walli did what he thought was right. An experienced pipe fitter, he refused to use valves he believed were too weak for testing pipes at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. He worried the valves would burst, flooding leak-prone tanks containing millions of gallons of radioactive waste and injuring himself and the environment.

The Department of Energy, which manages Hanford, is supposed to protect whistle-blowers such as Walli who try to make the nation's nuclear installations safer. But when Walli was laid off, twice, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration twice found that he had been illegally fired in retaliation for raising safety concerns.


	Randy Walli steadies a ladder during work at the Boise Cascade mill in Wallula. Walli is involved in a lawsuit over his dismissal from a pipe-fitter job at Hanford. Jackie Johnston / Seattle Post-Intelligencer Click for larger photo

And DOE, instead of admonishing the contractor that fired Walli and four other pipe fitters, is paying its legal costs. The agency has spent nearly $1 million in tax money, in fact, on the firm's battle with the pipe fitters.

DOE even lauded the contractor, Fluor Federal Services, for its safety program, awarding it coveted "star status" earlier this year. The star designation, "aimed at truly outstanding protectors of employee safety and health," was granted after a review of safety practices and interviews with hundreds of employees, DOE said.

DOE and the contractor "preach safety real hard, but they don't back it up," said Walli, who has fought to get his job back for more than three years.

He has struggled not only with costly legal opposition but hostility on the job, including Hanford co-workers leaving the room when he entered.

Before his layoff, Walli said he had not worked directly with radioactive materials. But after Fluor rehired him after a settlement, he was given more dangerous jobs, including removing old radioactive waste tanks from a shut-down reactor.

DOE and Fluor spokesmen insist they support whistle-blowers. "We still have a policy of zero tolerance for whistle-blower retaliation," DOE spokesman Manny Van Pelt said.

Fluor said the pipe fitters were laid off not because of whistle-blowing, but because their jobs were winding down, according to OSHA documents.

Fluor appealed both OSHA findings that it illegally laid off the pipe fitters, pressing its case first with the agency and now in the courts. And why not? Financially it has nothing to lose. But the taxpayers do -- they continue to cover Fluor's lawyer fees and settlement costs. And it isn't over yet.

The bailout continues despite language in Fluor's contract saying the company must repay Hanford if there is an "adverse determination" in a case.

Nothing 'final'

Despite the OSHA findings that Fluor violated the whistle-blower act, the firm and DOE contend that unless there's some final determination that the pipe-fitter firing was illegal, the company is not obligated to repay the government.

"There has been no ruling of guilt in this case," said Jerry Holloway, spokesman for a company affiliated with Fluor Federal Services. "Even though this has gone on for a long time, ... there has been no final determination in terms of the merit of the original allegations."

DOE pays legal costs in such situations because whistle-blower claims are not always legitimate and contractors need protection, its general counsel told Congress.

That way, "contractors small and large can afford to remain focused on doing the nation's work, and attorneys aren't paid to ride the bench," Van Pelt said.

Tom Carpenter, West Coast director of the Government Accountability Project, a watchdog organization providing legal aid for the pipe fitters, said the policy is biased in favor of the contractors.

DOE's message to contractors is: "we'll support your wrongdoing," he said.

The state Court of Appeals in Walla Walla will decide soon whether to send the Walli case to trial or arbitration.

Even if ultimately Fluor loses, it's not clear that DOE would recover its costs. Van Pelt would not comment on a hypothetical ruling, but said, "there would have to be certain deliberations ..." to determine whether Fluor has to pay back legal costs.

"There may or may not be latitude ," he said. "It all hinges on the legal decision."

Fluor's "safety record has been outstanding at the site and shown continuous improvement," Holloway said, adding that it's below national averages for work days missed because of injury and recently set a record at Hanford for going nearly one year without an employee injury.

'Mr. Safety'

Though he was taking a job at the nation's largest hazardous cleanup project, Walli didn't worry about safety when he went to Hanford.

A native of Richland, he wanted a job near his home, wife and children, now ages 3, 15 and 16. For 10 years, he'd worked all over the nation waiting for business to pick up in his hometown. In 1993, it finally did.

"I took a job out there because ... it's close to home, it's steady and they (Hanford workers) make more money on average than the normal construction worker because they work year-round," said Walli, who has been a pipe fitter for 24 years.

Even before the valve incident, he had raised safety concerns with Fluor, causing a company employee to refer to him sarcastically as "Mr. Safety," according to OSHA documents.

On May 30, 1997, Fluor employees told Walli's crew to install valves to be used under higher pressure than he believed they were designed to withstand, said Walli, who was a foreman.

Suppliers of the valves -- which were labeled for use at 1,975 pounds per square inch -- wrote a letter to Fluor saying the valves could withstand the 2,235 psi at which they were to be used.

Walli refused to install them.

"This is what we do for a living. This is what we've been trained to do," he said. "We never exceed the working pressure of the valve."

The project involved building a 6.5-mile pipeline for transferring hazardous waste stored in the Hanford tank farms, home to 177 giant leak-prone tanks containing millions of gallons of radioactive waste.

Though the valves were going to be used temporarily in a test without radioactive material, Walli was concerned they could explode or break, flooding the notoriously unstable Tank SY-101, which for years burped hydrogen gas. Walli eventually agreed to use the valves, provided his team would not be in the area during the test. Fluor agreed, but at the last minute said Walli's team would need to be present after all, Walli said.

Again he refused to use the valves. Soon after, a Fluor manager procured stronger valves, and -- using them -- Walli and his crew successfully performed the test.

But within a week, he and four other pipe fitters were told their job was done, and they were laid off. "We knew the job wasn't done," Walli said. "They were still working on that after we got back."

Fluor denies that the layoffs were retaliatory. Holloway would not address this project specifically, but said it's the nature of jobs at Hanford that they are finite and subject to fluctuations in budgeting and scheduling priorities.

Hostile climate

Two more pipe fitters opted for layoffs because of the incident. About two months later, the seven men filed complaints with OSHA, claiming they were fired because of their whistle-blowing.

An OSHA investigation concluded that the five pipe fitters were fired in violation of a federal act protecting DOE whistle-blowers. The two who left voluntarily were ruled against. Fluor was ordered in October 1997 to rehire the five pipe fitters and pay lost wages, damages and attorneys' fees.

Fluor appealed the OSHA decision and settled the case days before an administrative hearing. All seven pipe fitters were paid $42,000 each, plus $40,000 to their attorneys. The $334,000 settlement -- in which the company admitted no guilt -- was reimbursed by the DOE.

After almost a year of battling Fluor, the pipe fitters thought victory was theirs. They were eager to go back to their good-paying jobs at Hanford, a workplace that would be safer, thanks to their actions.

"We felt we were changing the culture and changing the practices," and that "you can stand up, and it will be a better place," Walli said.

Instead, the men said they returned to a hostile climate in which co-workers would get up and leave when they entered a room, and they were given riskier assignments.

"I'll never be able to work out there again and be treated fairly," said Shane O'Leary, one of the laid-off pipe fitters.

Fluor's Holloway would not speak specifically about how the men were treated, saying only, "Fluor doesn't tolerate retaliation."

In order to rehire the men, Fluor laid off seven other pipe fitters, prompting more than a dozen foremen to sign a letter opposing the rehire. Those seven newly laid-off pipe fitters also filed a complaint with OSHA, charging Fluor with retaliating because several of the seven supported Walli and his crew and alleging that Fluor was trying to create a hostile environment.

Fluor said the seven were laid off to make room for the returning workers. OSHA ruled in Fluor's favor, and those pipe fitters appealed.

And less than a year after they were rehired, five of the pipe fitters from the original layoffs -- Walli included -- were fired again.

The process started all over.

In May 1999, again OSHA found that Walli and the others were wrongly terminated. The workers were told there was no more work, but discovered records of pipe fitters being hired to replace them.

Again, Fluor appealed.

The pipe fitters from the second and third rounds of layoffs withdrew their complaints with OSHA in March 2000 and took the case to state court. They're trying to win back pay, compensation for emotional distress and the chance to return to their old jobs. Carpenter said they moved the case to the courts seeking a more expeditious resolution.

If Walli wins his case, would he go back to Hanford?

"I would say yes," he said. If not, "you're not proving your point and making it better for anybody else."

P-I reporter Lisa Stiffler can be reached at 206-448-8042 or lisastiffler@seattlepi.com

Add P-I Local headlines to