One of Obama's Social Security Slasher Wannabes Threatens Small Town with Nuclear Annihilation

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David Cote is so dangerous he's willing to risk nuclear fallout in order to force uranium workers to cut their retiree health care and pension plans.


One of Obama's Social Security Slasher Wannabes Threatens Small Town with Nuclear Annihilation
AlterNet / By Mike Elk

September 1, 2010 | A lot of attention has recently been focused on one of President Barack Obama's top advisers on the Federal Debt Commission -- Former Senator Alan Simpson, R-WY. Simpson has generated justifiable outrage for describing Social Security as "a milk cow with 310 million tits." But Simpson isn't the only unhinged fanatic on Obama's Debt Commission. One man, in particular, stands out as far more sinister, and he was hand-picked for the Commission post by Obama himself.

Meet Honeywell CEO David Cote -- perhaps the most dangerous man in America. So dangerous that he's willing to risk nuclear fallout in order to demand that uranium workers agree to cut their retiree health care and pension plans.

Honeywell runs the only conversion facility in the world that can distill pure uranium, located in Metropolis, Illinois. On June 28, Honeywell locked out its union workers during contract negotiations because the union, United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7-669, refused to accept the company's proposal to eliminate retiree health care and pension plans for new hires and increase workers' out-of-pocket health care to $8,500 a year. Good health care coverage for retirees is especially important to uranium workers, who suffer rates of cancer 10 times higher than the general public due to their daily interaction with radioactive material. It's easy to see why the workers would refuse to give in to demands to eliminate retiree health care coverage.

In a major concession, the uranium workers' union refused to go on strike, out of concern for the safety of their complex and dangerous facility. To keep the plant safe, the union agreed to continue working under an extension of its current contract. But that didn't satisfy Honeywell, which is already making record profits. It decided it could make even more if it played hardball with its workers, risking a nuclear disaster.

So Honeywell's executives locked out the local uranium workers, who have decades of experience operating a hazardous uranium enrichment facility. Instead, Honeywell hired hastily trained scabs (replacement workers) to run the plant. Honeywell uranium worker John Paul Smith described the plan to run the plant on poorly trained scab labor as "a serious gamble." The Metropolis uranium plant is the only uranium enrichment facility in the world that can distill pure uranium, and it would be impossible to train workers fully on how to run such a complex facility in a matter of days or weeks.