Complaint Review: Tropicana Products / HR Representative - Tammy Pearson / Department Supervisor - Gene McCormick /

I was surprised at first when I recently read the report filed by another employee about the lack of professionalism and ethics demonstrated by administrative and HR personnel at our production facility at Bradenton, FL. But it is definitely true, I have suffered similar reprimand and suspension pending review. The review being an independent arbitration hearing conducted between "The Company" and usually our business agent for the Teamsters Local 173 of which I am an active member. It is only due to the advocatcy of people like Robert Tuttle and our president, Wendel Buttler that I was permitted to return to work after a 7 week suspension between October and November of 2005.

My hire date was 01/23/03 and my department assignment was as an Utility II laborer in the Repack Department. Tropicana Products regularly schedules monthly safety meetings to inform and reinforce topical messages pertaining to safety issues in the work environment. The topics seem to revolve on a regular basis over the course of a calender year. Which means you should expect to be trained and retrained on subjects like utilizing PPE (personal protective equipment) and lockout tagout proceedures, ergonomic lifting and position, ect.

In my third year of employment with Tropicana Products there was an unusual occurance of two department safety meetings focused on the same topic, Hearing Protection and procedures to follow to comply with company guide lines. I was curious why the subject matter was being double dipped so close without coming out with a posting of an OSHA accident report or some substantive cause. As our department meeting was scheduled at the first hour of our shift, everyone dismissed and returned to their work stations to begin the daily production schedule. My teammates and I work a typical 8 to 12 hour day dependent upon customer orders for demand in the marketplace. I had plenty of time to reflect upon the message focusing on your individual responsibility to protect yourself OR report excessive conditions which may have an engineering solution.

I go home, sleep on the matter and return to work at 5:00 am the next day which was a Friday. I must inform you that I was previously married to a Certified Audiologist, and learned more than the average citizen about hearing loss methods and remedial treatment to compensate for same.
The coclear ear transplants were a hot topic at our dinner table when the conversation turned to "how was your day dear?" That technical information in four-part-harmony was all I needed to know that I did not want to come close to losing my hearing, which is a permanent loss that never comes back. Industrial and military personnel who must be exposed to the hazard in the workplace environment should all be compensated hazardous duty pay.

In the course of the day I had the opportunity to look around my various work stations to check what was making all the noise I was supposed to be aware of from my recent safety training. The worst identifiable source of industrial noise was obviously a signal horn that had recently been installed to identify a stopped condition. That conveyor transports empty cardboard boxes to a compactor located about 50 yards away on the outside of the building in which we work. The addition of the compactor/conveyor device was a recent improvement to our production line since the previous method had been to break down the boxes by hand. The problem was that the signal horn device was never tested after installation with a certified audiometer and qualified audiologist to determine if the noise the horn emitted was within OSHA guidelines, which is available on their website for anyone to read. The other factor was that there was no communication with any of our support services to determine if the container was just full and had automatically shut down or if it just had tripped because the wind had picked up outside and a collection of the cardboard was blocking a light sensor.

In any case, the constant blairing signal horn was giving everyone in the general area of our production a splitting headache and creating an unnecessary workplace enviromental hazard. I verbally brought it to the attention of the workgroup lead, Jeff Garber and the safety committee volunteer from our workgroup, Chris Uptagraff. I also pointed it out to the next mechanic who passed through our workarea and by the end of the day had communicated my observation to our Department Supervisor, Gene McCormick. Everyone responded that it would only be a temporary condition and not to worry about it.

Thirty days passed and no signs of improvement were demonstrated. I was getting frustrated that no corrective action was being persued and that my "pestering" was more annoying to my supervisor than simply filling out the workorder to have the condition fixed. I didn't back down from my initial plea for help in solving the problem and became a real nuisance to anyone passing through our work area when the horn was non stop. Sometimes the length of exposure to the "noise" was for more than an hour at a time. It was deafening in its decibel output and surely was in excess of OSHA standards I was confident. Still I could not convince anyone to come to my aid and remedy the problem. I was told by my lead, Jeff Garber to just forget about it an get back to work. My supervisor just became less and less available to avoid my insistant calls for corrective action.

One friday afternoon as the production line had stopped for the lead to change the shrink wrap film, I saw a portable extention ladder at the end of the room near where the horn was mounted on the wall. I informed the lead, Jeff Garber that I was at the end of my patience to wait for some one to solve our problem and that I would take the initiative to try and remedy the situation myself. He advised me "that he would not do it" and my response was that I wasn't asking for him to do anything, but I would try an experiment to see if I could make an improvement in our work environment at least on a temporary basis. Our working conditions are stressful enough without the added factor of an excessively blairing horn on top of the mix.

In less than 3 minutes and before the equipment had been restarted I had climbed the ladder to the level of the horn an taped a square of packing foam over the device to see if it would effectively muffle the output to a more acceptable and tolerable level of sound. The production restarted and my lead, Jeff Garber had made the phone call to our Department supervisor, Gene McCormick who visited me about 45 minutes later to request my attendence in his office which was about a 5 minute golf cart ride away. He informed me that I was in trouble with the HR Department and that I would be given a reprimand for my actions without authorization.

As I entered the small industrial office, I was introduced to the Wackenhut security officer who would escort me off the Tropicana company property. I said I wanted to discuss the offensive issues declared in the reprimand and would appreciate an opportunity to explain the situation from my perspective. I made it clear that at no time did I consider my actions to be beligerent, or in any way sabotage of company property. That I had repeatedly asked for assistance to correct the problem as I had identified verbally to anyone who I thought could help. I expressed my disappointment with the lack of timely response from Mr. McCormick and the frustration of not being given assistance to properly follow "the chain of command" to achieve my goal of at least reducing the workplace hazard to myself and to the members of my workmate team members. I thought it was unfair to penalize me for the delenquient actions of my supervisory staff and I would appreciate the reprimand be rewritten to take into consideration the points that I had made in my defense and had proven valid. Of course no such compomise was offered.

A major cause for my rehire back to full employment and not continuation of my unemployment status for which I did receive compensation for the seven weeks of sabatical, were the digital photos taken by my Teamsters Union President, Mr. Wendel Butler, proving that no corrective action had been taken by Tropicana Products to remove the temporary muffler that I had installed. Indeed it was probably a good thing for all my teammates that it had been left in place for their continued protection against permanent loss of hearing ability.

Upon my return to work, I had all of my teammates sign a petition to elect me as their shop steward representing them in the Teamsters Local 173 Union. I continue to this day to be a strong advocate for their rights as hourly employees at Tropicana Products, a part of the QTG division of PepsiCo. I also signed up to be a volunteer safety committee member and have written many defective condition reports. It's still unclear why even today there is so much reluctance to make our work environment better for the employees who work to make Tropicana a profitable contributor to the PepsiCo corporate business picture.

I never was given an opportunity to follow up with my supervisor, Gene McCormick or the Manager of Packaging, Harry Kantor, or my Human Resource representative, Tammy Peircson to discuss the procedures to improve the communication between our separate departments. I am disappointed that that condition still exists here at Tropicana Products. The PepsiCo CEO, Ms. Nooyi sent a video conference message to all employees in the corporate family of businesses expressing her desire that the most important asset were the employees who labor to make it all happen every day. That may make for good PR to our stock holders, but the reality is far short of that goal with my personal experience at the Tropicana Products facility here in Bradenton, FL. It seems as though the HR department personnel have taken an advisarial position in direct contrast to Ms. Nooyi's directive. I know the Teamster's Local 173 Union membership would like to see a reversal of conflict with the Administration and Human Resource departments. I make a personal appeal to Ms. Nooyi to intervene and turn around the attitude here at our facility to make true her words of encouragement stated in the PepsiCo code of conduct. Please help us in any way you can. Contact me by response to this forum or arrange for a conference either here in FL or at your offices in Purchase, NY. Our Union officers are available to negotiate a lasting peace. Please call soon. Thank you.


Robert
Bradenton, Florida
U.S.A.