Three weeks before the San Bruno disaster, long-time PG&E employee Mike Wiseman had filed suit against the company for what he calls a disregard of safety violations.
Wiseman, a 10-year veteran of the power company, works on the gas transmission pipelines that crisscross the state. He filed a suit against the company after he and a team of workers were sent into a ditch to fix a faulty pipe. He says they had neither training nor even an instruction manual to tell them how to go about the job. To prove this, he had his foreman take a photo of him in the ditch.
He says his supervisor threatened him with retaliatory action over the photograph and even confined him in a hotel overnight while threatening to fire him. Wiseman claims that this is just one case of harassment and safety violations occurring at PG&E. Since he filed his suit, he says, many of his coworkers have contacted him with stories of their own.
PG&E denies the charges and says that it encourages its employees to step forward with safety concerns. “We have absolutely no tolerance … for retaliation,” the company adds.
The outcome of his lawsuit could have a major impact into any investigation of what actually happened in San Bruno.
Read More at ABC 7.
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Digger Tue, Sep 14, 2010 - 8:50 pm
What’s up with the backhoe bucket against the transmission main?