This afternoon we ran out of work so Mack, my supervisor, sent me to another ship on another pier to deliver a required Hotwork Notice form for that ship's Fire Marshall to sign. On the way back to my car a sticker on the back window of a pickup truck that was parked on the pier caught my attention. "Sniper," it said. "No need to run, you'll only die tired." Well the truck was parked next to a DDG, a ship of the same class as the Bainbridge, the ship involved in the rescue two days ago of the merchant marine captain taken hostage by the Somali pirates. That crisis was resolved, as we know, after Navy SEAL snipers killed three of the pirates.
So I wondered if the truck with it's bloodthirsty message might belong to a Navy SEAL sniper assigned to this particular ship. I walked around it looking for clues, and quickly noticed, not any identifying Navy markings, but a parking lot tag and door placard identifying it as belonging to some guy who worked at one of our competitor shipyards. He also had stickers that said "POW-MIA," "NOBAMA, 2008," and "Who's our president - - the answer's a no brainer." This guy wasn't a sniper, he was just some right-wing wannabe. I didn't wait for the owner of the truck to appear, but it wouldn't surprise me if he was some guy in his 50s, overweight, a heavy smoker, with diabetes and a heart condition. Of course, the description would fit a large number of shipyard workers.
That's not to say that I'd put it past a real Navy SEAL sniper to put a sticker like that on his truck. I'm sure there are some who would. I mean, in this voluntary military service there are probably quite a few who get into something like the SEALS and into sniper school because they want a chance to kill somebody legally. Which reminds me of an apprentice we have in our shop, who they say was discharged from the Army for being mentally unstable. I've had a little contact with him, working in his vicinity, and he hasn't done anything crazy. In fact, he seemed quiet and mild mannered. Of course, those are the ones who always turn out to be the killers.
Today I passed an Army recruiting station. Only it didn't say Army Recruiting Station. It said Army Career Center. Yeah. If your want to make a career out of chasing Taliban around the mountains of Afghanistan. I suppose if your career goal is to be sniper and shoot Somali pirates there's a Navy Career Center somewhere. And if you flunk out of both you can always get yourself a macho bumper sticker and stick it on your truck.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
It Must Be Finished When I Say It Must Be Finished!
At the start of the shift on Monday, March 30, Ronnie Wilson picked me out of the shape up meeting and told me I was going to another job - - a job outside the yard at a nearby Naval base.
That morning, before work, as some of us were sitting around the lunch table in the fabrication shop, Kenny the burner said they were sending him to that same ship, and I said, because Kenny always kids around about not wanting to work with me, "Well, I'm going down there with you." I meant it as a joke, but Kenny didn't know that. So you can imagine my surprise when Ronnie gave me the news.
Well, not real surprise, because I seem to have an uncanny knack for making a joke about something and then having it come true. I wasn't sorry to be sent on a job outside the yard. For one thing, the Naval base is closer to where I live so it means less commute time. And the atmosphere is always freer outside the yard - - not so many big shots and would-be big shots walking around. Not so many rules.
The thing that kills me, though, is that they sent me off without even asking for any turnover on my job - - that is to say, without my briefing my replacement on where things stood. The diagonal aluminum bulkhead. The job wasn't finished, and who knows who they might have given it to. I took it upon myself to pass on to Vince where I'd hidden two parts they'll need (so they wouldn't grow legs and walk away), but there's no telling if he'll remember, or even if he does, whether he'll tell whoever takes over the job. More wasted time while whoever it is figures things out.
Anyhow, now I'm down at the Naval base on a 'hot' job. Kenny and I are installing two new watertight doors. The supervisor there is Mack, an old fitter who they made a supervisor a couple of years ago. Last year he had a heart attack and had to have multiple by-pass surgery. He's supposed to take it easy, so he usually spends his time hanging out in his truck in the parking lot. He calls his people on their cell phones. Only neither Kenny nor I have cell phones - - I think we're the last two holdouts on Earth. Well, they've been worrying him to death about these doors, and he's been making us nervous, coming up and hanging around on our job. We thought he was going to have another heart attack right there on the spot. What the big rush was, I don't know, because the ship isn't going out to sea, in fact, it's getting ready to come into our yard to be drydocked. He kept telling us, "We've got to be done here by Friday." That was last Friday. And he meant the doors had to be welded out, too. And what's more, somebody's started counting beans, so they wouldn't let us work overtime on this job.
Here's the way it works: some bozo in some office comes up with a date he wants a job finished, regardless of the realities of the situation. Then they tell you it has to be done by that date. Well, of course we work by the hour and we know the realities, so our attitude is, it'll get done when it gets done. (At least some of us see it that way. There are always some assholes, or newcomers, who are either scared or trying to suck up, who get themselves bent out of shape by these dictums.) But that's not the way the supervisors react. They're yes men, remember? They wouldn't dare try to explain why a job can't get done when the big shots say it must be done, or they wouldn't be supervisors for long. So what happened is that the bozo who came up with this completion schedule forgot that the ship had to de-fuel before coming into the ship yard, and when they are transferring fuel the Navy won't allow you to do any hotwork - - burning/plasma cutting, grinding, or welding. They've had hotwork cut off now for three days. We finally managed to finish fitting up the doors today, but they haven't even started welding them yet, and this afternoon Mack told me that now they won't do it until the ship comes into the yard, which means finished a week late - - three weeks instead of two - - if they're lucky.
That morning, before work, as some of us were sitting around the lunch table in the fabrication shop, Kenny the burner said they were sending him to that same ship, and I said, because Kenny always kids around about not wanting to work with me, "Well, I'm going down there with you." I meant it as a joke, but Kenny didn't know that. So you can imagine my surprise when Ronnie gave me the news.
Well, not real surprise, because I seem to have an uncanny knack for making a joke about something and then having it come true. I wasn't sorry to be sent on a job outside the yard. For one thing, the Naval base is closer to where I live so it means less commute time. And the atmosphere is always freer outside the yard - - not so many big shots and would-be big shots walking around. Not so many rules.
The thing that kills me, though, is that they sent me off without even asking for any turnover on my job - - that is to say, without my briefing my replacement on where things stood. The diagonal aluminum bulkhead. The job wasn't finished, and who knows who they might have given it to. I took it upon myself to pass on to Vince where I'd hidden two parts they'll need (so they wouldn't grow legs and walk away), but there's no telling if he'll remember, or even if he does, whether he'll tell whoever takes over the job. More wasted time while whoever it is figures things out.
Anyhow, now I'm down at the Naval base on a 'hot' job. Kenny and I are installing two new watertight doors. The supervisor there is Mack, an old fitter who they made a supervisor a couple of years ago. Last year he had a heart attack and had to have multiple by-pass surgery. He's supposed to take it easy, so he usually spends his time hanging out in his truck in the parking lot. He calls his people on their cell phones. Only neither Kenny nor I have cell phones - - I think we're the last two holdouts on Earth. Well, they've been worrying him to death about these doors, and he's been making us nervous, coming up and hanging around on our job. We thought he was going to have another heart attack right there on the spot. What the big rush was, I don't know, because the ship isn't going out to sea, in fact, it's getting ready to come into our yard to be drydocked. He kept telling us, "We've got to be done here by Friday." That was last Friday. And he meant the doors had to be welded out, too. And what's more, somebody's started counting beans, so they wouldn't let us work overtime on this job.
Here's the way it works: some bozo in some office comes up with a date he wants a job finished, regardless of the realities of the situation. Then they tell you it has to be done by that date. Well, of course we work by the hour and we know the realities, so our attitude is, it'll get done when it gets done. (At least some of us see it that way. There are always some assholes, or newcomers, who are either scared or trying to suck up, who get themselves bent out of shape by these dictums.) But that's not the way the supervisors react. They're yes men, remember? They wouldn't dare try to explain why a job can't get done when the big shots say it must be done, or they wouldn't be supervisors for long. So what happened is that the bozo who came up with this completion schedule forgot that the ship had to de-fuel before coming into the ship yard, and when they are transferring fuel the Navy won't allow you to do any hotwork - - burning/plasma cutting, grinding, or welding. They've had hotwork cut off now for three days. We finally managed to finish fitting up the doors today, but they haven't even started welding them yet, and this afternoon Mack told me that now they won't do it until the ship comes into the yard, which means finished a week late - - three weeks instead of two - - if they're lucky.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Sausagegate
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Petty corruption is common in the shipyard. I'm not talking about bribes, kickbacks, or that sort of thing. I mean corruption that takes the form of people engaging in business enterprises, legal or illegal, while on the company payroll, which means on the taxpayers dime, since almost all the work we do is Federal contracts.
People run gambling pools for football or basketball. There is, or I strongly suspect there is, prostitution. I've heard of instances of people being caught and fired for having sex while working (or supposed to be working) aboard ships. That's easy to do on night shift when there are few people around and practically no supervision. Knowing the people in the shipyard as I do, I'd strongly suspect that in a case like that a commercial transaction was involved. I also heard of a worker, or two workers sharing, who paid a firewatch $100 a week for sex on a regular basis. In that case I doubt that any sex took place on the job, but the transaction was certainly set up there. Anyhow, it gives an indication, tip of the iceberg so to speak.
I once had a firewatch working for me over a period of time, a black woman about 35. Her mother was career army, and she had lived all around the worlk. She she was unusually well-educated and well-spoken for a firewatch. We talked a lot, which upset another firewatch, a lesbian who had a crush on this woman. My firewatch didn't have a car, and since she lived along my route home, I offered her a ride. On the way, she asked if we could stop at a 7-Eleven and asked me for a couple of bucks to pay for whatever it was she wanted. I gave her rides a couple more times, but stopped when I saw that the mooching was becoming a regular habit. Some weeks later I learned that she'd been arrested for prostitution and her lesbian friend had been bailed her out. I never heard anybody accuse that woman of hustling on the job, but I mention her story because I'm sure there are others like her among the firewatches, the lowest echelon of female shipyard workers, who rely on casual or part time prostitution to supplement their otherwise erratic income.
Another form of corruption in the shipyard involves union officials. When I first came to work at the place where I work now, 30 years ago (I left after 5 years, then returned many years later), the union president was a welder. The company gave him an especially easy job. He never had to go out on a ship, but stayed in the welding shop all day and did little gravy jobs from time to time. He had a refrigerator there, and sold sodas and snacks. He had his gravy job and ran his little side-line business with the full knowledge of the company. You think he accepted those favors from the company and didn't give them anything back?
The current vice-president of the union is also a supervisor, in name at least, which to me is a conflict of interest in itself. He has the rank and pay of a supervisor, But the real reason he has it is that he's a so-called 'apprentice instructor.' In reality he does little or no instructing of the apprentices. All he does is monitor their attendance, disciplinary problems they may have, and the notebooks in which they are supposed to record what they have done on the job. But he is in a position of power over them. The union pays a bounty of $20 or $30 per head for each new union member that someone signs up (we're in a 'right-to-work' state). So this guy uses his authority over the apprentices to get them to join the union, then collects the bounty on them. It probably doesn't amount to much money over the course of a year, a few hundred bucks at most. But he also uses his position to get overtime work whenever he wants it, although he does almost nothing when he does comes in on overtime apart from walking around and acting like a big-shot. Using their position to arrange overtime for themselves is something many of the supervisors do, by the way.
But here's the case I wanted to talk about. My job was shut down temporarily so we could concentrate on jobs that have to be finished for 'PCD,' or 'partial completion date.' Yesterday Starner had me helping Vince. But this morning he told to help Harry Edwards, the crew leader, who's working under Marc Malloy, not Starner. Night shift had put in a large, curved side plate of thick aluminum. They'd 'made up' (fitted together flush) the butts, or the edges of the plate, but hadn't pulled it in to the longitudinal beam that is part of the framework of the ship. Edwards wanted me to fix it, which meant undoing almost everything that night shift had done and doing it over again. That wasn't difficult, but the odd thing was that Edwards already had three fitters and an apprentice working on this job, not to mention a welder. I ended up supervising all these people as well as working with the tools myself, which is what the crew leader is supposed to do. So I'm thinking, well, they must be giving Edwards too much to do if he can't be here taking care of this himself.
When we had the job most of the way finished, I went looking for Edwards to report. That was at 11:10 am, 50 minutes before lunch. I couldn't find him anywhere, but I ran into Marc Malloy and asked him if he'd seen him. "No," he said, "But he's probably back in the shop making his food." What he was talking about was that Edwards sells sausage and onion sandwiches at lunch time from the locker room over the fabrication shop. These he prepares using one of those big, banquet size slow cookers.
I'd known about this little sideline of Edwards's, because I'd seen him doing it one day when I came to work around 11:30 am after a doctor's appointment. At the time I wondered how he got away with it, but I didn't think about it any more until sometime later when I ran into him collecting money, during working hours, for his football pool. He was doing it right out in the open - - in the supervisors' trailer. I've heard that a lot of the supervisors are Edwards's lunch-time customers, including Bobby Lee Palmer, the assistant foreman of our department. Go figure.
Petty corruption is common in the shipyard. I'm not talking about bribes, kickbacks, or that sort of thing. I mean corruption that takes the form of people engaging in business enterprises, legal or illegal, while on the company payroll, which means on the taxpayers dime, since almost all the work we do is Federal contracts.
People run gambling pools for football or basketball. There is, or I strongly suspect there is, prostitution. I've heard of instances of people being caught and fired for having sex while working (or supposed to be working) aboard ships. That's easy to do on night shift when there are few people around and practically no supervision. Knowing the people in the shipyard as I do, I'd strongly suspect that in a case like that a commercial transaction was involved. I also heard of a worker, or two workers sharing, who paid a firewatch $100 a week for sex on a regular basis. In that case I doubt that any sex took place on the job, but the transaction was certainly set up there. Anyhow, it gives an indication, tip of the iceberg so to speak.
I once had a firewatch working for me over a period of time, a black woman about 35. Her mother was career army, and she had lived all around the worlk. She she was unusually well-educated and well-spoken for a firewatch. We talked a lot, which upset another firewatch, a lesbian who had a crush on this woman. My firewatch didn't have a car, and since she lived along my route home, I offered her a ride. On the way, she asked if we could stop at a 7-Eleven and asked me for a couple of bucks to pay for whatever it was she wanted. I gave her rides a couple more times, but stopped when I saw that the mooching was becoming a regular habit. Some weeks later I learned that she'd been arrested for prostitution and her lesbian friend had been bailed her out. I never heard anybody accuse that woman of hustling on the job, but I mention her story because I'm sure there are others like her among the firewatches, the lowest echelon of female shipyard workers, who rely on casual or part time prostitution to supplement their otherwise erratic income.
Another form of corruption in the shipyard involves union officials. When I first came to work at the place where I work now, 30 years ago (I left after 5 years, then returned many years later), the union president was a welder. The company gave him an especially easy job. He never had to go out on a ship, but stayed in the welding shop all day and did little gravy jobs from time to time. He had a refrigerator there, and sold sodas and snacks. He had his gravy job and ran his little side-line business with the full knowledge of the company. You think he accepted those favors from the company and didn't give them anything back?
The current vice-president of the union is also a supervisor, in name at least, which to me is a conflict of interest in itself. He has the rank and pay of a supervisor, But the real reason he has it is that he's a so-called 'apprentice instructor.' In reality he does little or no instructing of the apprentices. All he does is monitor their attendance, disciplinary problems they may have, and the notebooks in which they are supposed to record what they have done on the job. But he is in a position of power over them. The union pays a bounty of $20 or $30 per head for each new union member that someone signs up (we're in a 'right-to-work' state). So this guy uses his authority over the apprentices to get them to join the union, then collects the bounty on them. It probably doesn't amount to much money over the course of a year, a few hundred bucks at most. But he also uses his position to get overtime work whenever he wants it, although he does almost nothing when he does comes in on overtime apart from walking around and acting like a big-shot. Using their position to arrange overtime for themselves is something many of the supervisors do, by the way.
But here's the case I wanted to talk about. My job was shut down temporarily so we could concentrate on jobs that have to be finished for 'PCD,' or 'partial completion date.' Yesterday Starner had me helping Vince. But this morning he told to help Harry Edwards, the crew leader, who's working under Marc Malloy, not Starner. Night shift had put in a large, curved side plate of thick aluminum. They'd 'made up' (fitted together flush) the butts, or the edges of the plate, but hadn't pulled it in to the longitudinal beam that is part of the framework of the ship. Edwards wanted me to fix it, which meant undoing almost everything that night shift had done and doing it over again. That wasn't difficult, but the odd thing was that Edwards already had three fitters and an apprentice working on this job, not to mention a welder. I ended up supervising all these people as well as working with the tools myself, which is what the crew leader is supposed to do. So I'm thinking, well, they must be giving Edwards too much to do if he can't be here taking care of this himself.
When we had the job most of the way finished, I went looking for Edwards to report. That was at 11:10 am, 50 minutes before lunch. I couldn't find him anywhere, but I ran into Marc Malloy and asked him if he'd seen him. "No," he said, "But he's probably back in the shop making his food." What he was talking about was that Edwards sells sausage and onion sandwiches at lunch time from the locker room over the fabrication shop. These he prepares using one of those big, banquet size slow cookers.
I'd known about this little sideline of Edwards's, because I'd seen him doing it one day when I came to work around 11:30 am after a doctor's appointment. At the time I wondered how he got away with it, but I didn't think about it any more until sometime later when I ran into him collecting money, during working hours, for his football pool. He was doing it right out in the open - - in the supervisors' trailer. I've heard that a lot of the supervisors are Edwards's lunch-time customers, including Bobby Lee Palmer, the assistant foreman of our department. Go figure.
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