My History at Consolidated Controls/Eaton PSD

Here's one doc or pick where I wrote my boss up for skipping operations(fraud)
on a 41SG16-18 which is a brake pressure transducer off a B-1B bomber.

Submitted by Larry Daigneault (February 5, 2002)

At the start of March 1983, after being out of work since early November, the DOL refered me to a CETA job opening at Consolidated Controls in Bethel, CT. The opening was for an inspector there. The day of the interview gave me my first direct glimpse of corporate corruption. On my way out the door I was told the job I interviewed for wasn't the job I applied for and would pay .25/hr. less. In retrospect, I should never have gone back.

When I reported to Larry Setaro, the inspection foreman, what had transpired, he wasn't surprized. But being a just and honest man, he made amends as best he could in my first reviews. Things were pretty routine for a while. After 3-4 months I was given the responsibility for the 21SN04 line. Farley was making his move to acquire Condec Corp. My first November there is proof enough that an independent QC Dept. is a necessity. 3500 switches were rejected or put on Discrepency Report. About a year and a half after I started, my foreman was suspended and removed from his position for threatening a subordinate with a screwdriver. Though there were many witnesses to the contrary, he did have it but was coinsidentally in his hand at the time the woman was being insubordinate to both group leaders. None of the witnesses were questioned which seems to be the pattern at Eaton PSD. QC Engineer Ralph Sakal was installed as Setaro's replacement.

Gary Hatch, one of my group leaders, choose me to supervise the Hughes Adcap Qualification testing. Later I was given the job of running the testing of the first two production runs. Mr. Sakal was so impressed with my performance he asked me to become evening shift groupleader when we started having a second shift. While I didn't want the promotion I did want to free my days to spend with my daughter of whom I had custody. In my first January on evenings or the year before I had hand surgery the first Friday after New Year's Day. When I tried to comeback to work the next Monday I was told I would need a doctor's note to return to work. I was also told that the sick day I used would be credited back to me as short term disability kicked in the day I entered the hospital. I was out two weeks. In the mean time the company changed its policies to having to use sick time before disability was invoked, but also if one had gone over the forty hours the prior year one had to accumulate it at 3.3 hr./month. The effective date of the memo was the Monday after I tried to come back so it was a retro active application. Mr. Sakal to do me a "favor" allowed me to be credited with all 40 hours of sick so they could take it away. I was the only one directly affected by the rule change. Being already involved in a divorce situation I took no action.

In the summer of 1987, I remarried and I believe it was also when Farley sold Consolidated Controls to Eaton Corp. To accomodate the lifestyle change I returned to days. Several months after Eaton acquired us, management announced that profit sharing date would be changed to reflex Eaton's different fiscal year and that it it would be small reflecting the short year and lower profits. Coincidentally Corporate announced they had found money to retire some debts. About this time I was asked to become the designated QC person for repairs and I accepted. In 1988 the one mistake, other than starting to work there, I made at PSD was caught by a DCAS inspector. An ATP had been altered and I interpreted it incorrectly according to engineering, my mistake was in omitting to get feedback from engineering about the change, whatever the reason it was something I should have done and normally did. I point this out not because I got a written warning over it because only on paper was the warning about my actual fault. The verbal portion was very enlightening. You see I answered a direct question about my actions from the DCAS officer and put past shipments in jeopardy with my truthfulness. I was told this was against company policy but that if nothing happened in the next year the warning would be thrown out of my record. The question was about my actions so only I could answer it accurately. I felt my duty as a citizen far out weighed any loyalty I might owe Eaton.

End of 1989 to 1990, I was given another Hughes Adcap order to work on with two co-workers. Now in the meantime production people had changed and a lot of experience was gone from the floor. Many mistakes were causing rejects but the greatest cause was instability in the 6607A7-105's. The units needed to be set to the high range prior to aging them, thermal and pressure cycling. Corporate had decreed that no time could be added to our routings, the Harvard Business School myth at work. So instead of doing the effective thing the engineer took the position that the ATP was failing the units not the other way. But instead of amending the ATP and sending it out for Customer/Gov't approval they put a change to the ATP in the routing, the list of building steps. This violated the Navsea print requirement that any change in building technique be requalified. Such a test costs in the $15,000 range maybe more. The other 2 inspectors agreed with me that this constituted fraud, unfortunately my wife didn't see it that way. We inspectors continued to test the units the legal way. One of inspectors transfered out. When it came time to do the 6607A7-105's for the month the other inspector balked and took another p/n though this was supposed to be a day/evening operation. So I balked to and went to my supervisor about the inappropriateness of the change. He mislead me and told me the ATP was out for change but my groupleader was somewhat honest with me and told me not to expect the change for a while so a day or two later I went back to Mr. Sakal. I got more assurances from him. After I happened to speak to the Contracts person handling the account and he told that the ATP was out for minor changes, tolerances were added to the temperatures. He also told me that during the meeting that the change to the routing was approved the QC manager, a man passed retirement age got up and said, "If it was caught he'd take the fall."

The situation forced me to deal with Mr. Recht for the first time as he was the HR head and Ethics enforcement officer. Literally in tears from the stress I related my concerns. Most of the meeting he acted as though he had no clue as to the paperwork processes in the plant escalating my distress. But he told me he would look into it. I had said to him I'd follow the routing if the ATP was amended to incorporate the change and sent out for approval, a not uncommon practice. A few days later Mr. Recht came back to my with another lie that, "...it will be taken care of"(section 1512). Prior to this, I had received my first FAA repairman license to handle repairs and the intention of creating a formal repair dept. strongly suggested. Shortly after these events, I was asked to transfer to the new dept. I jumped for it. I had realized management had no commitment to quality at PSD so there was no future in inspection but a looming big future in repairs because of their lack of commitment. What ever I was so relieved to be out of inspection I neglected to follow up on Mr. Recht's promise.

Unfortunately after I committed to the transfer, Gary Hatch warned me about Mr. Delisle. He couldn't understand why such a "worthless person" had been chosen over Guy Gustafson to run the repair dept. My first day under Delisle exposed his control freak behavoir to me. I had informed him of an appointment I had and that I wouldn't be in until 10am Monday the next week which he noted on his blotter. When I wasn't there on Monday he ran around ranting and raving that he was going to give me a written warning for not calling in according to Guy, the requirement is/was for prior warning of absence or the earlier the better. When I arrived at 10 as predicted he was cooler but I had to point to his blotter to appease him. His response was he wanted to be called anyway instead of appologizing for his atrocious behavior. His repetetive asking of the same questions drove Bui from the dept. Delisle did do one thing nice for Guy, Rusty and myself. He put us in for raises reflecting the added resposiblity of carring an FAA license but Mr. Recht sat on the raises for at least two months until the expected wage freeze went into effect.

CCC/Eaton PSD has never been know for a high wage scale anyway. Delisle aslo impressed me with his INCOMPETENCE early on by assigning Mr. Rustigan the 21SN04's. He had had Rusty, an electronics technician, train with Bui on 6607's, a totally different switch technology. His first dept. directive(oral) was that time from overrunning jobs was to be put on warranty orders, time fraud, but a minor one as we operated off quotes not the time actually spent on a job. I didn't have to refuse this directive as it was so rare for me to overrun. Early on I became aware of the hostility Delisle bore Kevin Finch. I would hear stories from Guy and Kevin about Delisle hastling Kevin about trips to the bathroom. Kevin had signed up for summer hours but his car broke down and he couldn't make it for 7am. Taking the bus the best he could due was 7:30. Delisle refused to grant him the right to return to the normal 8am starting time which I for one was still going by. Kevin had to go to HR to get relief and later Recht would tell me he knew nothing of Delisle's abusiveness toward Kevin. One day I told Delisle about the policy that if one worked OT one could do it at the beginning of the day. He told me to keep quiet about it!

I had endeared myself to Delisle by being efficient and thorough even started to get friendly with him but never could be friends with anyone that capricious. I especially earned favor by catching the major cause of our cost overruns, another case of Delisle's incompetence, in that the company was charging the dept. a labor rate higher than we charged customers. As examples of Delisle's incompetence are too numerous to list I will give just one more as such. He loaned Rusty and I to production for half days, Rusty in the morning and I in the afternoon. At the same time he wanted us to cross-train each other in preparation to swapping major areas of our schedules. He had to be told this was impossible to accomplish since neither would be in the same room together.
In 1993 Delisle signed back into service a switch I and the others refused to recertify for fear it would crack in flight as one had in 1992. This was because Contracts didn't want to answer the question of why a functional unit couldn't be put back into service. This action showed me Delisle deserved nothing but contempt.

The more I dealt with Delisle the less respect I could show for him. In 1993 his atitude started to become hostile to me. He had me trained and certified to solder. Since soldering my units myself was more efficient I started to do them. When he saw me soldering he asked me, "What I thought I was doing?" I responded with,"My Job." He stamped off with a "humph." Also at this time from time to time he started to come up behind me while I would be entering data at a terminal and put his hands on me, massaging my shoulders. This was obviously unwelcome and his way of saying I was his to play with. According to Guy Gustafson he did it to him also. Also I believe it was in this year or the next that Delisle had us work on this presentation for management about changing our paperwork flow, a simple report would have been more apropriate exposing this to just a Delisle brown-nosing session. A few minutes before the first rehersal I received a request from the Ham. Std. source inspector to rerun a repair unit for him. I told Guy to tell Delisle I couldn't come because of the imiment arrival of the source inspector. Dick came back for me and asked why I wasn't coming. When I told him why again he left with an angry "Humph." Later for the second rehersal Delisle had told me to be a little early so he could help me transfer my diagrams to transparencies for the overhead projector. When I arrived at work I told Delisle I would be at the copier and waited there for him. He didn't come so I xeroxed a dozen sets of my diagrams for distribution which of course made me late for the meeting by 10 minutes. I can't prove it was an intentional act to discredit me because Delisle has a good excuse in his faulty memory. Also about this time Krou Siou confided to me that she had complained to Delisle about the funny smell(alcohol) on Rusty's breath in the mornings. Delisle told her not to worry about it. I already knew Rusty was an alcoholic from having him over for poker games and his wife's refusal to allow him to drive anywhere hinself where there's drinking like the company Xmas party. The FAA safety positions are required to abstain from drinking in the four hours prior to work. I myself have personal knowledge of alcoholism from dealing with my first wife. Also in '93, a machinist was fired and his boss suspended for the altering of an inspection gauge to cover a mistake in machining parts for Navy Nuclear, a 150k error. Because the Gov't inspector caught it actions had to be taken. The reason the supervisor wasn't fired was because the only evidence against him was the word of the discredited machinist. Later when this supervisor wanted to leave, Mr. Given, arranged a promotion to keep him at Eaton.

It was toward the end of '94 that the big trouble started. First I need to say that all our repair licenses had made it clear that we were to operate under QC and not production control, in fact the JAA was very adamant about it, but the management at PSD used this leger de main of differentiating between the repair group and the repair station. The JAA reasons I'm sure were about avoiding the numbers games American production mangers play and the resulting corruption of a statistical reward system. Corporate issued a directive that the devision was to be graded on repair turn around time(TAT). A TAT of less than 30 days was the target. When Delisle announced this as our #1 priority, my imediate and open reponse was that it was inherently unethical and that good quality service must remain our #1 goal of which a speedy turn around is but one aspect. His reponse to me was, "How could that be?" to have explained further would have been a waste of time. I was soon ordered to push the repairs out to the production floor, I replied that this violated our JAA license and refused. I also asked Mr. Rovillo, the outgoing FAA coordinator, if my interpretation was correct and he agreed. Within 24 hours of my refusal all overtime was taken away from me. Rusty had even asked Delisle to have me help him as he was behind, but Delisle refused. FAA even has a term for this form of harassment, it's called "pencil whipping." Delisle also knew that my wife had filed for divorce that October. (She would blame me for not working the OT to lower my earnings prior to the divorce.) The week before Xmas Delisle called me into the office and told me, " If I got with the PROGRAM and work my schedule down in the 40 hours(impossible without violating the regs), I could have all the OT I wanted." Or in other words show I didn't need the OT and I could have it. Of course I said NO. This is a clear and flagrant violation of section 201. He also told me I could no longer stay late to make up time for my marriage counselling sessions or make up any lateness. This was in accordence with a universally ignored rule, the only case I know of that it was invoked. Imediately after leaving his office I told Guy and Rusty of the bribe. The extortionate denial of OT continued. Also at this time I started feeling nauseous at the thought of merely talking to Delisle. PTSD was setting in.

In February 1995, Delisle came upon me alone, working thru my break and said, "I got the goods on you and I'm going to get you." He started harass me about being late even though Rusty was late more often and generally later when late. Rusty was rewarded for ignoring the regulations later with a promotion to groupleader for which he was the least qualified of the three repairmen. Not that Guy or I would have wanted to spend even more time with Delisle. Delisle also ignored Rusty's coming to work after drinking. Even though I loved the work I was doing I would get nauseous in the morning before work and started feeling fatigued. The worst part was having to talk to Delisle to tell him I would be late or not come at all. This of course lead to more warnings about tardiness even though I had lost no real time from work because I charged my vacation time as was my right. In fact in the last 3 3/4 years I only had six hours of time absent. I still had two weeks unrestricted vacation time left when terminated. I went from below normal BP to boderline high BP. My BP medication, Univasc, may have contributed to my feelings of fatigue.

In March of 95 Delisle wrote up a rewiew giving me no raise and so full of distortions I had to protect my name. I wrote a letter to the head of HR, Mr. Recht, detailing the gross distortions and favoratisms, I also complained about the bribe. I copied the letter before sending it to Mr. Recht. When I met with him, he avoided the subject of the bribe. He would later say I told him not to take any action there. I said I couldn't remember that and since removed from the stress of the situation I remember well waiting and waiting for Recht to bring it up but he never did. At least Delisle stopped touching me. The attempted extortion continued until July '95 when Delisle ordered Krou Siou to bypass QC and an another necessary operation to save two or three days on TAT. The unit was from the ICS program(B1 Bomber) an Air Force/Rockwell subcontract and therefore a blatant attempt to defraud the Gov't. I wrote up the unit and Delisle for which his boss, Given, gave him a days vacation, a one day suspension with pay as he was salaried. About six months later Given promoted him to supervisor of M&C repairs with the rediculous notion one could combine FAA/military functions with commercial products. Since DCMC never asked me about the rejection I would have to assume the hard back portion was illegally omitted from the data package. If they had known I'm sure they would have requested his dismissal. I gave DCIS agent Cannon the original, it's a triplicate form, as just one of the things he's investigating.

From then thru 1996 things were kind of quiet as we worked to change from our MMF license to a regular repair station license. I authored a new repair traveler in response to an audit finding. A new rule was slipped into the handbook banning hats. Production was matching Boeing's gear up so there was little slack for production to do repairs other than the P&W retrofit campaign. Rick van Demark joined the dept. around then. Also James Dykes was assigned the engineer for my product line. Sales signed contracts with first Rolls-Royce and later GE Arkansas involving special TAT considerations. I expressed my concerns about these being anti-trust violations in that a repair station as a public licensee had to operate on a first come first serve basis also as our Boeing contract stated. But this didn't concern me directly so I dropped it.

In January 97 I caught the flu and later a sinus infection. I was sick for 2 weeks but didn't miss a whole day. The second night I was sick, I coughed myself to sleep after 5am. At 5 I shut my alarm off. I awoke at 10 and felt well enough to come in for a while, upon arriving and eventhough it was quite obvious the day before that I had the flu I was greeted with another warning for tardiness. Delisle's mismanagement of the M&C group had inflated their usually excellent TAT and of course pushed up the average. Also FAA returns increased due to the economic boom and advertizing our repair station license. The law of diminishing returns set in so Delisle who knew next to nothing about pressure switches decided to micromanage in a major way exasparating everone just about. To cover his failure in M&C he had Guy split his time there and eventually all his time, wasting his FAA license yet all we would hear from Delisle was how he was going to put it to use. He set priorities by who called last. He started issuing these priority lists based on our schedules but the data would be 5-6 days old by the time he would give them to us.

I suggested we just put in dates like we used to when the order/unit got price approval but he wouldn't allow it. There were occasions where Delisle insisted Guy do M&C receiving instead of ours although there were others who could do it and were short of work. Of course the repair station receiving would back up and was the major cause of late evaluations.On 3/21/97 Delisle called me into his of fice to ask about progress on a list he had issued. I explained I had worked on about half of it and about 1/4 of the list I would get to, and the last portion was being held up by different things. He then called up my time sheet from the day before to pick over it. He first hit on three orders not on his list and I told him they were the same part # and customer as three that were on his hot list so it made no sense to not do them. He got mildly angry at that and raised his voice. He then found some "return as is" units I had shipped. The daily processing of the price approval list was SOP and part of that was processing all scrap, return to stock, or "return as is" units almost imediately. The system as Delisle set it up bogs down if one doesn't. After the meeting I told Rusty about it and he said I was right that's exactly how he handled the PA list. Emotions on both sides escalated. Delisle accused me of being disobedient and I countered with his micromanaging of the dept. wasted time and I knew how to do my job better than him. I threw up my arms in disgust and exasparation. A single sheet of paper, I was holding, fell from my hand. Not wanting to lose my temper I left but looked back to see Delisle with this big shit-eating grin on his face, he does so enjoy aggravating people.

A couple hours later I was called into Recht's office for a verbal warning. When I querried Recht about the several lies Delisle had incorporated in his account, I was told it wasn't his job to question a supervisor, some ethics officer. I resolved to finally tell the FBI about the bribe as I was almost positive this was illegal. I told several friends and Krou over heard and asked me to explain. I was later warned Krou was Delisle's snitch but I'm not convinced she told him as Rusty was double dealing also. Whatever when I told Rusty, Rick and Guy they cheered me on. Plus I don't believe in secrets or subtrefuge so I didn't care if Delisle knew. I called the FBI and they dropped the ball. They told me it was an FAA matter only but I knew that the FAA had limited enforcement powers. Unfortunately I told Recht of my conversation when given the warning for saying I was going to call the FBI. This gave them the false assumption they could get away with what they were doing. I was issued a written warning for violating ethics protocol which Recht knew was bogus because of my prior letter.(sections 371, 372, 1512, & 1513)

It got so bad Rusty, Guy, Rick, and myself agreed to go to the QA manager. We agreed to go the next day. Well the next day came and Rusty called in sick with high BP. It was more like a caseof cowardice at exposing his double dealing, his image as a company man with Given, and what little credibility he had with us. But we agreed to wait for Rusty. Delisle came in telling jokes like we were causing Rusty's problem trying to provoke us to action. Sensing something a foot I tried to leave the room, unfortunately I had to pass Delisle to leave so he grabbed me in a bear hug as if he were my friend in front of Rick and Guy. I pulled away and went to the mens room as I felt like throwing up. After that I couldn't wait nor could Guy or Rick. Not unexpectedly the QA manager stonewalled us, later he would tell me he couldn't find the 4 hour rule. I told him to try the counselor who handled the indoctrination to the random testing to which we were subject. A second meeting with Given present was just as unproductive, I brought out the reject tag I mentioned earlier and it was passed back around without comment. In the end all we got from Given was a threat to do our jobs or be fired. Delisle treated us like slaves. Rick van Demark left early with a headache from a meeting with Delisle and was givena written warning for leaving even though the rule only requires notification of leaving, slaves need permission. Another time Delisle asked me why I hadn't started a couple units. I said the price wasn't approved yet and I had $20,000 in approved orders to work on already. He countered with, "I could use that excuse too."

After I called an erratic new P&W unit a failure I was taken off the P&W retrofit campaign. A request to have me reinstated on the program by Mr. Dykes was ignored. Later Mr. Dykes and I were warned not to talk. He was the design engineer on my major product line so I guess we would have no reason to talk especially with 3 active recall canpaigns and a fourth pending to get the bugs out. Earlier I had been warned not to talk to Clark Rowland the most experienced switch person there was. Eaton management gets very upset when honest people talk to one another! The summer of 97 they started to enforce that rule they had added the year before against wearing hats in the building. I protested the rule as a ridiculous and unnecessary intrusion on my privacy, carring anti-semetic overtones, and subjected my eyes to needless glare. I had worn a baseball cap for most of my 14 years there.

Plus it prevented contamination from my balding head. I went to Recht and was told a lot of younger people were to be hired and the plant manager was afraid that they would want to wear hats. Testing how irrational the management was, I asked about a visor which clearly wasn't covered by the rule. Recht responded he would have to consider it a hat. So I took my hat off for a while but with the 4th of July coming up I was overcome with the feeling that I was betraying everything good I and America stood for. To try to avert a showdown I wrote a letter to the plant manager about my feelings. In the letter I mentioned the problems with Delisle so the letter was refered to Recht for investigation. Nothing was done by the 7/3 so I wore my hat and refused respectfully to remove it. I was given a three day suspension without pay but I have never been prouder of myself. When I returned from suspension I was tempted to do it again but consided my duty to protect the public from Delisle a higher calling. Also I was told Kevin Deangelis had worn a hat most of the day I was suspended, he was the son of the production head groupleader. It was during this suspension that I first contacted Guendelsburger & Taylor about suing Eaton.

A few weeks later I was called into Recht's office with Rusty. Recht issued the results of his "investigation." While Delisle hadn't denied offering me the OT(setion 201), Recht denied this was a violation of the law(section 1512) and within Delisle's pervue. Like Recht forgot to say it, Rusty added that Delisle had denied me OT as part of a test of my output. That comment exposes the choreographed nature of the cover up.(section 371) If it was a test why did it last 7-8 months and end imediately when Delisle was suspended that one day. < supoena time records 94-95> And why did he refuse Rusty's request for assistance from me? Recht also said he got Kyle Ursitti's opinion as to the operation of the repair station even though he wasn't involved at the time and copies of the FAR's and licenses were on hand to be read. He failed to asked Guy Gustafson anything even though I named him as a witness in my first letter and my testimony against Delisle. (Does anyone see a pattern here?)

A while after the hearing I received my review, two months late. According to Rusty he had put me in for a 4% raise, Delisle had approved it for 3%, but Given didn't want to give me any. Recht wouldn't approve the zero raise so it had bounced back and forth a couple times before they settled on 2%. Given, I assume as it wasn't signed, penned a little note on the back complaining about my ethics complaints wasting time. This is a flagrant violation of the corporate ethics policy forbidding the consideration about ethics complaints in a review. The form we all sign mandates the reporting of all suspected unethical behavoir. I have a copy of it with the review. I was hit with depression over the fact that Guy was transfering out the spring of 98. On 3/2 I took a vacation day but failed to call in so I quite expected to be fired then or at least suspended. I knew with Guy gone they would do something to get rid of me anyway. When I was given the written warning I put forth a solution to my calling in problem by using email instead. While Rusty had no problem with the idea Recht tried to dissuade him from allowing me. I believe my solution threw a monkey wrench into their plans so they had to resort to lying.

A couple weeks later I contacted a woman on AOL from the area. I was thrilled because most of my contacts were out of state. Monday I told all my friends about her including Rusty. Tuesday I again talked Rusty about her calling her the Shell lady for the station she owned. He knew all the details of the meeting I did. I even told him I had to wait until I needed gas to go see her. So that Thursday I drove to meet her at lunchtime, after telling Rusty I was going. The lady wanted to set and talk so I did. After I drove back to work and went to the dept. Rusty wasn't in the room when I arrived so I logged in my two hours vacation time. It was 2:15 so I had a half hour to kill, 15 minutes of vacation and 15 minutes of breaktime. I returned to the room at 2:45 to be greeted by Rusty's ranting about Delisle being upset because I wasn't around to answer a question, and he was upset because he couldn't tell Delisle where I was, and he had "assumed" I would meet her in town and only be a little late. Even if I was sure Jegnesh or Kamal heard me tell Rusty it would have been a waste of effort to ask for justice from Recht though I did still protested that I had complied with the rules. There were no just men to protest to, so again I was treated like a disobedient slave. If I didn't notify Rusty why had he assumed I was going out at all? The policy doesn't require permission.

There was a curious aspect to the suspension in that it wasn't imediate. I was allowed to finish the day. I continued to work on 8 units for GE Arkansas. When it came time to go homeI had only finished the paperwork on four of the eight units so I shipped the four. The ATP was done on the other 4 but I hadn't filled out the 8130-3 forms for them. Since Rusty had already violated regulations by signing off units I had tested without rerunning them I locked the data sheets up in my security cabinet. I held a confedential clearence.
About this time I saw the cables being removed from 212C117-127C's for Ham. Std. I assumed they had been miswired. According to Rusty I was right but only half so because they were miswired internally. He had brought some repairs out to be soldered and he was afraid they would be miswired with the rework units. What production was doing was miswiring the external joints to match the miswired internal joints, a blatant ISO 9001 violation. If they didn't get a waiver on the miswiring from Ham. Std. it was a fraud and the parts would be counterfeit as far as the FAA goes. Also when I came back I saw Hung Pham sealing leaky headerswith Loctite C on more 212C117-127C's. This was illegal as Loctite C isn't on our assembly print and another ISO 9001 violation.

The day back from the suspension, 3/25/98, the tension was so great I had to do something humorous to break it up, by responding to a racy e-mail. I related it to Rusty and we shared a laugh at this "outburst" as Recht would later characterize it, and the rest of the week passed without incident. Monday morning at 9:00, Rusty had me come with him to Recht's office. Rusty, an ex-squid, who says the F-word several times a day, started accusing me of using obscene language, specifically the words "masterbate" and "blowjob." He also lied and said that Kamal and Jegnesh were so upset he had to console them. I protested that that wasn't so ... thanks to Whitewater part of the political dialogue, the most protected of all speech. But again Recht ignored the facts, he is consistant, pushing a copy of the handbook my way he told me I was on administrative leave for a week pending a final decision but not to expect to be called back. Though they alledgedly had their meeting later that day I wasn't informed until Friday. They took a month to get my pink slip to me.(section 1513) Luckily for me, they had failed to post the DOL bulletin warning about not waiting for your pink slip. This allowed me to appeal and get the back unemployment as I had filed late. (section 372)

While waiting for the ax, I chatted with Mr. Dykes and asked him to talk to Kamal and Jegnesh. Dykes was leaving Eaton of his own accord. He was able to talk to Jegnesh who confirmed that neither he nor his brother was anyway offended. Another curious aspect of this case is that Mr. Taylor wrote me in declining the case that no law was broken and that they were in their rights. Not, as later, after I found the US Code on the web when he said I didn't have enough evidence and then told me to contact the US Attorney's office. Whole lot of difference in calling something immoral and calling it criminal but your evidence is weak. Also he didn't wait for me to get the copies of my warnings and reviews I had asked for, to make the decision. If Mr. Delisle thought he was within legal bonderies, "Why wasn't I written up for insubordination when I refused to push repairs out to the production floor?!"

(Essay originally composed on 4/19/99.)