Integrity in the Safety Directorate?

Frank,
Dick Watkins, AD for Safety and Quality (oh, and Environment and Health) started his all hands meeting at the NSSB by stating that he wanted to “tear [an unnamed employee’s] head off just that morning.”

He went on to say that he’d overheard an employee say, ”That’s not my job” in a conversation. He referred to the worker’s words as showing an unacceptable attitude for anyone under his supervision.

This from a Bechtile who will soon retire, only to come back as a “consultant” charging multiples of thousands of dollars for his wisdom.

This from a corporate executive who supposedly supports an institution-wide Human Performance philosophy meant to look for flaws in the organization to explain accidents, rather than assigning blame to workers.

Watkins touts a decreasing rate of injuries and illnesses as a Bechtel accomplishment at LANL. This is not because of the success of great new Bechtile safety programs at LANL, but the direct result of Watkins and Cantwell pressuring the employees who classify cases to interpret them as less severe, or find a contorted rationale to classify them as “not work related”, and therefore not impacting the safety statistics. Even the health care providers at Occupational Medicine have altered their treatment of patients to minimize the statistics because of pressure from Watkins.

Good riddance to another retired Naval officer who did so much for to LANL. Let’s hope Cantwell doesn’t become his successor or the deception will intensify.
--Anonymous