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Thursday, March 26, 2009

For several weeks I've been working in the same space - - what formerly was two spaces, now being combined into one in what the Navy calls a 'shipalt.' For the first few days I was partnered with Elmore Sr., but Starner, my supervisor, moved him to other jobs, working with his son. Since then, I've been on my own, working alone except for the occasional welder (with his firewatches), who I need to tack weld for me.

On steel work we shipfitters generally do our own tacking, but on this aluminum work, which they deem 'critical,' the Navy requires that all welding, even tack welding of temporary attachments, to be done by a welder certified in the process to be used, in this case wire feed (MIG) welding machines.

I have installed a diagonal bulkhead, which will have a wire cage door in it, in place of the solid, jogged bulkhead that existed before. I have also installed an insert to close up the hole left from removing a door from the p-way that used to access the office that is no more.

Yesterday I was on a roll. I worked solid all day, practically without a break except for lunch, 'inserting' (or closing off) two large cut-outs in the top of the new diagonal bulkhead. These cut-outs were the result of a design screw up on the part of the shipyard contracted by the Navy to do the design work on this shipalt. Whoever did it envisioned a bundle of cables passing in one side of the new bulkhead and out the other. It made no sense, because there wasn't any reason for the cables to enter the space at all.

My 'buddy' Joe had started this job, and going by the print he had raised the bulkhead plate with the cables looping in one side and out the other. Getting this bulkhead in was a pain because of criss-crossed beams in the overhead and the fact that the plate isn't flat but rolled about 45 degrees on each end, not to mention the various other obstructions. Anyhow, I was the one who pointed out the screw up, although reps from the Navy and the design contractor had both scratched their heads at seeing the cables go in one side and out the other. I took the plate out again to remove the cables so they could pass in a straight line outside the bulkhead.

Anyhow, as I was saying, I worked hard all day yesterday fitting up the plates to close off the cut-outs. Apart from the cables and pipes and other stuff in the way, this was no easy task because of the joint design our welding department came up with to make it easier for themselves but harder for us. This joint design calls for a 3/16" gap where the plates butt together, and each of the plates must be beveled 30 degrees on the edge. All this is to facilitate weld penetration. They then weld the joint using a removable ceramic back-up strip behind the butt. For fit-up then, the insert has to 'float' in the hole so to speak. Holding the 3/16" gap while aligning the plates is difficult, not to mention tedious, and requires special procedures. So yesterday I completed one plate start to finish, including cutting it to size, and got the other one about 80% done. But when I came in to work this morning I found that they had taken my welder away and the weld supervisor refused to give me another one. So I was pretty much stuck - - another wasted day, so far as production was concerned - - apart from some clean-up.

So today I was totally alone. Sometimes that isn't a bad thing. One day last week - - St. Patrick's Day, in fact - - I had two welders in the space with me - - both of them trying to give me shit about my fitting. Some of the welders are crybabies, including these two. They think my job is catering to them, to make things as easy for them as possible. (The biggest crybaby of the two is the son of one of the department foremen. I call him "Prince Philip.")

Then there was the heater. The Navy requires that the aluminum we're working be at a minimum of 60 degrees before welding. That isn't a big problem now because the temperature outside the ship has been 50 degrees or more lately. But we have a big 440 volt electric blower heater in the space to use when necessary, and it can bring the aluminum up to temperature in a few minutes. The problem is that some of the firewatches, especially the women, think the heater is there to keep them warm and they want it blasting all the time. It gets too hot for me to work. That day I had to battle them, too. Every time I'd shut the heater off, they'd turn it on again. That's the way it went all day.

Obama's Going To Give It To Us Anyway

For the past couple of weeks Starner has foregone his morning harangues, but he must have taken some stupid pills, because this week he's back with a vengeance. The ship came out of drydock on Monday. This is an important milestone in one of these major repair/overhaul evolutions, as it means the work to the underwater hull is now complete. Drydocking a ship is a very expensive proposition and the Navy gets upset if it doesn't happen on time. (In this case, it was some days late, but I'm not sure how that will pan out, because at least some of the delay was caused by the need for some unforeseen repairs to one of the struts that holds the starboard propulsion shaft.)

Anyhow, here is a representative quote from Starner's tirade this morning: "This ain't no joyride. The fun and games is over. We got a ship to get out. I don't know about you, but I like my job here. We gotta get this ship outta here. I been doin' this shit for 25 years, ever since I graduated high school." He was joined by Ronnie Wilson, who lectured us again on absenteeism, especially on weekends. Yesterday he told us that last weekend, of 39 people scheduled to work, only 20 showed up. They also told us that 10-hour days were now mandatory, but when I left at 4 pm (after 8 hours), they had marked 8 hours on my time card. Go figure.

One of those who did stay over today was Joe, ever willing to be the yes-man. At about 3:30 I ran into him standing around shooting the shit with a couple of contractors who've been helping him. Echoing Starner, I said in jest, "What are you all standing around bullshitting for? We've got a ship to get out." Joe answered something to the effect of "what else have we got to do, we're working till 6?" So I said, "You're just going to steal the taxpayers' money, huh?" "I do it every day," Joe replied. "Obama's going to give it to us anyway," one of the contractors put in.

Crazy

"Things are starting to get crazy around here," Starner, my nominal supervisor, told me one day last week. "They're always crazy here," I replied. "We were supposed to have finished Sunday," he said. I didn't comment on this. I assumed he was referring to the aluminum part of the work our yard is doing, the repairs and "mods" to the ship's aluminum superstructure.

Even though Starner is practically useless - - he checks with me first thing in the morning, then disappears for the rest of the day - - at least he's no longer disrespecting me by assigning me to jobs that aren't up to my skill level. As for craziness, they've been trying to work the job seven days a week, 10 hours a day - - bringing some people in two hours early, while others have been working over two hours in the afternoon. I could do this if I wanted, but I don't. (Forty-eight hours a week is pretty much my max.) I don't know what these people do with their money. Most skilled workers in our yard gross over 40k per year on straight time. If they're married, most of their spouses work, also, often earning more than they do. Together, that's a pretty good family income. I guess they waste their money on a lot of stupid shit.

But working these hours always brings the same result - -people "laying out" even more than they normally would. Elmore, for example, worked the previous Saturday and Sunday for overtime pay, then laid out Monday and Tuesday (straight time pay). His son came in Monday but laid out Tuesday.

And we have the usual chaos. Most of the day Starner made his "crazy" statement, I spent waiting for a welder. One of the welding supervisors promised me a certain welder after he finished another job. Then the other welding supervisor took him and put him on something else. So the first one promised me I'd have a welder first thing the next day. But then he didn't come to work the next day and the second welding supervisor wouldn't honor the other's promise. For efficient production the shipfitting and welding needs to be coordinated and organized rationally. Where I work that rarely happens.

Yesterday I had a welder, but he couldn't weld because the riggers had removed from the ship the bottles of shielding gas for the wire-feed (MIG) welding machines used in the aluminum work. They did this in preparation for taking the ship out of drydock. But that's not happening for several days at least. So then they put a rack of bottles back on, but it turns out it was the rack of empties. I finally got the job done today. Who pays for this disorganization and inefficiency? The taxpayer, of course. Mr. Obama, are you reading this?

Joe's Story

The supervisors' office for the shipfitters and welders is located in a loft over the structural fabrication shop. It's reached by a flight of wooden stairs about two stories high. Today, Bobby Lee Palmer, the assistant foreman for shipfitters, who must have been up and down thousands of times, fell down that flight of stairs. He was taken out of the shipyard in an ambulance. They say one of his legs just gave way. Nobody that I talked to knew his condition. Bobby Lee isn't a popular guy. His main responsibility is assigning manpower to our various jobs, which isn't very demanding. When he's not doing that he tends to harass people for petty stuff. He's not noted for intelligence.

It's been weeks now since I've worked with Joe. But he's working in the same area, so I see him every day. On Saturday I'd stopped in to the space where Vince is working to borrow a reciprocating saw. Joe was there, just kibitzing. Kidding with Vince, I used a few words of Spanish, which I explained to Joe. But he said he already knew them, that he'd taken three years of Spanish in high school. This really surprised me, because Joe's not the kind of guy who'd strike you as a scholar. Well, in the discussion that followed, I learned that Joe had graduated from a local university with business degree, which was even more surprising.

Later, when I ran into Joe again, I followed up on the subject of what he was doing working in the shipyard. He told me he'd been a manager for one of the big package delivery services. But a neighbor of his, a representative for a tool manufacturer, who received regular package deliveries through Joe's company, told Joe that the packages, which were left on his front porch, sometimes disappeared. He asked Joe if he could watch out for them and bring them with him when he came home from work, rather than having them delivered by the truck. Joe was happy to do this service for his neighbor. It turned out that the packages didn't contain tool samples from the neighbor's company, they were shipments of meth-amphetamines from California. The DEA, which was already on to the neighbor, had one of its agents driving the truck that made the deliveries - - that is, until the packages that Joe had intercepted were no longer showing up on the truck. Joe was arrested and charged with conspiracy to deliver drugs across state lines.

Joe's lawyer got the charged reduced to simple possession and got Joe released on parole without jail time. But then Joe got ticketed for DWI, and because that was a violation of his parole, he was sent to prison for a year and a half. He first came to our shipyard on work release, to work as a firewatch.

Almost Killed In The Safety Office

This morning I had to go to the safety office. As I entered the single-story building, one of the safety inspectors was standing outside smoking a cigarette (duh!). Inside was the secretary and another inspector working at his computer terminal.

Just as I finished my business the inspector who'd been outside came in and told us that we had all just barely escaped being killed. We thought he was making a of joke. But no. Outside, 80 or 100 feet away, a tanker truck with a load of compressed oxygen was filling the yard storage tank. According to the inspector, who had witnessed the event, one of the landscapers contracted by the yard drove his riding mower under the trailer of the oxygen tanker. Apparently the tanker was parked athwart the roadway, blocking it. But - - so claimed the inspector - - the landscaper had not one but two lit cigarettes - - one in his mouth and one in his hand (talk about rednecks!), and the pure, medical grade compressed oxygen is highly explosive. Smoking in the vicinity when it's being transferred from one container to another is a real no-no. The truck driver took off running. With landscapers like this, who needs Al Qaida?

The safety inspector said that security guards were escorting the two-butt landscaper out of the. This is the last time I'll ever come to the safety office, I said, and they all laughed. Gallows humor.

Nine Lives?

Today, as a bunch of us were waiting for the end of shift whistle to leave the boat, one of the firewatches was talking to a guy in my department about back troubles. He was a black man, I’d guess in his late 40s, not a contractor, but a laborer who works for our company. He said he’d had to have a back operation for a crushed disc. This had been the second back operation he’d had. In fact, he said, he’d had just about every operation there was. An exaggeration, no doubt, but he said he’d had brain surgery for an anurism, and claimed to have had his "whole belly" opened up, drawing a line with his finger almost from his groin to his rib cage. I didn’t catch what all that had been for, but I think a hernia may have been part of it, but obviously something more serious as well. Then he went on to say that in addition to the surgeries, he’d been shot twice and had his throat cut twice. I expressed surprise at this, and he said his own brother had cut his throat one time. "Wow," I said, "You must have really pissed him off for him to want to cut your throat." He said it was because he tried to throw his brother out of his house. The brother was a "bad drunk," who apparently was freeloading. He also said his brother had served nine years in prison for shooting somebody in the face. The man said his survival through all of this was due to the intervention of God. "I’m blessed," he said. As I left, some of his friends were urging him to "give testimony."

But Who's In Charge?

Thursday, February 26, 2009

I’ve decided I’ve got to stop beating up on Starner. I mean in this blog. But before I do, I have to note that he was late to work again today. I don’t know how late, but it must have been very late, because I didn’t see him on the ship, on the pier, or in the office trailer all day. I didn’t see him until quitting time when he was handing out the checks. Not that I missed him. The various supervisors visiting my job are a pain in the ass because I have to stop working and explain what I’m doing. Today was a good day because I only remember two stopping by. Usually I get four or more.

One who stopped by today was Eric Hall. He’s in overall charge for my department, the shipfitters, on this particular ship. His visit was actually useful, because they still haven’t solved the problem of how many firewatches we need on the ship (rocket science?), so Elmore and I had a welder but he couldn’t do anything because we didn’t have any firewatches. Eric managed to get us one and arrange for us to share another with Vince. It’s not often that a supervisor gives us any help. The other visitor was ship superintendent Saul Gannatt, who’s been given the nickname "Rudolph" (as in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer) because of his red nose. Actually Rudolph’s nose, and whole face, is more purple and liverish than red in my opinion - - a mass of burst blood vessels, presumably the result of alcohol. A ship superintendent, by the way, is over all the trades, not just my department, as well as the subcontractors. Gannatt is actually a subordinate of the lead ship superintendent. There are four or five of them in all, and supposedly they have the various work items on the ship divided up between them.

Which brings me to the question of organization and chain of command. Chain of command, division of labor, delegation of responsibility - - to me these are basic components of organization. But they seem to be unknown concepts where I work. It continually amazes me that they don’t understand chain of command given that so many of the big shots come out of the Navy, and the company worships (or pretends to worship) the Navy. Sucks up to the Navy might be more accurate. For example, every year at the time of the Army-Navy football game they put up a big banner at the entrance to the yard, "Go Navy, Beat Army." Anyhow, we have all these supervisors but for the most part they have no clear delineation of responsibility. They all seem to operate independently. A couple of weeks ago I had two welding supervisors tell me two contrary things about the weld joint design for the butt joints in a bulkhead I was working with Joe. So I asked one of them, Henry, which one was in charge. I didn’t want to argue about this stuff all day and I wanted to know who to go to for a definitive answer. Henry’s answer was that they were both in charge. How can they both be in charge? Obviously they weren’t on the same page and they weren’t comparing notes. Now for the shipfitters I think there are seven supervisors on my ship. One of them, Tim Babbit, has been out sick for weeks. He’s overweight, sedentary, has diabetes, a heart condition, and who knows what else. He’s on numerous medications, along with his wife, and it seems like he’s been out for most of the past year. Jack Barnes is younger than Tim, but he’s also overweight and has health problems. He didn’t come to work today, and he "lays out," as we say, quite a lot. When he comes up on the ship he moves like an old man. He and Hilton Dines are the only ones who don’t visit my job, but it is Hilton alone who ever seems to have anything to do. Then there’s Starner, who you already know about. In name at least, he is my supervisor. There’s also Eric Hall, who I’ve mentioned, but he only stops by every few days. Ditto Ronnie Wilson, who is nominally under Eric, and Marc Malloy, a retired Navy chief petty officer and heavy smoker, whose place in the pecking order is vague, at least to me. I should also mention Bobby Lee Palmer, the assistant department foreman, who comes up on the ship frequently. Oh, and I should mention Harry Edwards, a crew leader (the lowest echelon of supervisor). So far as I know, I’m not part of his crew, but he comes on my job, apparently to check up on me, anyhow. None of them seem to have any contact with each other from the standpoint of chain of command or division of labor, since any of them might stop by and give me orders. If they’re under pressure from somebody they’ll do this often. If not, they don’t seem to care what I’m doing.

Meanwhile Elmore and I have been keeping ourselves pretty busy, moving the job along despite the obstacles and interference. I prefer to stay busy because it makes the day go fast. I try to do a good job for my own sake, as a sort of hobby. It’s the stupidity that gets to me. And the waste of money.