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July 4, 2008

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One of two large water tanks at Westar Energy’s Emporia Energy Center. A subcontractoris has been accused of wrongfully employing non-American laborers on the project.

Some workers provided by a sub-contractor to work on the construction of the Westar Energy plant outside Emporia were not pre-approved to work at the site, contractor Black & Veatch said in a 15-point summary release sent by Westar to The Gazette late Friday.

Black & Veatch assistant vice president of corporate communications Carl Petz told The Gazette on Saturday that Black & Veatch’s subsidiary, Overland Contracting, is still trying to gather information and documentation from Integrated Service Co., which provided 113 workers to Overland for pipefitting and welding projects. Included in that group were about 100 Filipino nationals.

The foreign workers were ostensibly working on the Emporia Energy Center project using H-2B visas, which allow foreigners to work in the U.S. on jobs for which American worker availability is scarce. A company wishing to use foreign workers with H-2B visas on a Kansas work site must apply with the state department of commerce, which then must confirm that there’s a scarcity of workers available to fill that need. None of the companies involved in the Westar plant project turned in such an application to the department of commerce for the Filipino workers’ positions.

“While those workers who were sent are eligible and in compliance with the department of labor certification process to work in the U.S.,” the Black & Veatch summary said, “they were not pre-approved to work specifically at the Emporia site. ... Upon learning that certain workers provided by InServ were not authorized to be at the site, OCI worked with InServ on a demobilization plan to remove those workers from the site and replace the workers with eligible resources.”

Petz said Overland learned within the past couple of weeks that some of the workers from Integrated Service, also known as InServ, weren’t authorized to work there. He said Black & Veatch expects all of its sub-contractors to follow the law, but said Black & Veatch wasn’t admitting that the workers were on the site illegally.

“What I’d say this is, is this a commitment to verify the facts,” he said. “What we’ve stated here (in the summary) and what I’ve said today is that we can’t answer 100 percent factually, because we don’t have all the details yet in our hands that we need. We believe that InServ would’ve followed the letter of the law. We believe that there could’ve been mistakes made on their part.

“But until we see that paperwork and until we conduct our own review and audit of that, we can’t say for 100 percent certainty either way.”

The summary release said that InServ workers were required to complete phase one of the plant project. Petz said Overland wouldn’t just take any local applicant for the jobs in question.

“For the types of jobs that those were, for pipefitters and welders — if you know how to weld, that doesn’t just qualify you,” he said. “Anybody that comes in that applies, we put through a rigorous testing process to make sure they’re qualified to do the types of welds that are necessary on a project like that. So (we) certainly have some strict criteria to meet.”

He said that workers are released from the plant project when their specific task is done, and any perception of American workers that they were laid off in favor of Filipino workers was just perception. He said if InServ was paying its contracted workers lower wages, Overland wouldn’t see any benefit from that, so it was a misconception that Overland was replacing workers to get a better deal.

“Because in fact, we’re paying InServ through our contract with them,” he said. “We’re actually paying them a premium because they’re a contract laborer. It’s like any other type of an agency. ... So there’s no advantage to us to actually bring in workers from InServ. It actually costs us more, because we hit that peak time.”

The remaining InServ workers on the Emporia Energy site were released on Friday. Petz said InServ workers would not be used for the remainder of the project, but because InServ is no longer needed, not because of the worker controversy — regardless of what the perception may be. He said Overland is confident that it can use more internal workers from other projects, or find more local workers, if it needs to.

“We have 182 people, including 38 local workers, at the site today,” he said. “We had 487 OCI people there at one time.”

Rep. Candy Ruff, who began an inquiry into the legal status of the workers, told The Gazette she is trying to schedule a news conference with Sen. Jim Barnett and Rep. Peggy Mast to discuss the latest on the situation and potential action that could be taken.

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