PANAMA CITY BEACH — From almost the day BP began hiring crews to patrol and clean the beaches and waters of Bay County there has been confusion, angst and complaints over the hiring process and duties assigned to workers.

Initial response teams were a hodgepodge of workers, but BP quickly made an agreement with Gov. Charlie Crist to employ a strictly Floridian work force and that transition was made during the third week of May, local BP spokeswoman Vani Rao said. Almost immediately there was an outcry for a narrower scope; Bay County people on Bay County beaches, Rao said.

“When we have these emergencies, and mostly it’s hurricanes and storms, we get a violent influx of people from other places and other states that feed off the money to be had as a result of the damage,” county commissioner Jerry Girvin said. “These people in Bay county are the ones that are suffering… they should be the first ones to have an opportunity for employment.”

Although it has been a gradual process to maintain the “operational integrity” of the clean up, the demands — from the public and the local government — to keep employment as local as possible have been heard, Rao said, and contractors have been told to move to a local workforce. But that has yielded consternation as well.

After work on July 14, Mark Fishbach, foreman of a crew for Lewis Environmental, said he and about 50 employees of the company were terminated without notice and told to vacate their hotel rooms by 6 p.m. Fishbach said he was part of a group out of St. Augustine and the men who were fired were from throughout Florida, including Orlando and Miami. Many of the workers had few options, if any, for returning home.

“Everyone was pretty much screwed,” he said.

Fishbach said he was told the company’s 90-day contract had expired and would not be renewed because oil had not appeared on Bay County beaches, meaning fewer people were needed and there was a drive for an all-local work force.

“We were the first crew here, bar none, and walked these beaches and now nobody will help us,” he said. “We came here to keep you safe and protect you all and now we’re getting the shaft.”

Rao said the local BP community outreach office has been inundated with similar stories, including one man who told her he used his last dollars on gas to drive up from Miami in search of work on the clean-up crews.

“We’re making one group of people very happy and one group of people very unhappy,” she said.

The clean up work is hot, uncomfortable and demanding labor, and county commission chairman Bill Dozier said he understands crews might not necessarily be filled by Bay County residents. In that case, he said, contractors should be turning to neighboring counties for manpower to keep the money in the area, but not until he stops getting calls from frustrated constituents who have tried to gain employment with BP and can’t.

David Russell of Gulf County said he has had similar problems in his county. He received his training during the second week in June and was told “we’ll call you when we need you.” A month later, he and friends he took the training with had not been called, but tags from Georgia and Alabama filled staging areas.

“How are some people getting chosen over others,” he asked.

Rao said specific hiring decisions are left to contractors and although BP can’t reach into a company’s personnel decisions they do “make (their) concerns known.”

Girvin and Dozier suggested they might not be making their concerns known loudly enough as constituents are still telling them on a regular basis they are working with out-of-area and even out-of-state people, even as the size of the labor force is shrinking.

About a month ago, Bay County had 4,000 BP workers, but over the last week or two that number has been scaled back to 1,000 to 1,200, Rao said. That number might scale back even further following Tropical Storm Bonnie. Operations have been scaled back in the wake of the storm and Rao said they would be re-escalated to the “appropriate level” after it passes.

“We had overstaffed because of the anticipated impact,” she said.

The Vessels of Opportunity (VOO) program has experienced similar problems.

Richard Morris, a commercial shrimper, said he has continually “fallen through the cracks” of the VOO program, although he sees recreational boats and out-of-state boats on the water all the time.

“This has been the most frustrating thing in my life trying to get into this VOO,” Morris told congressional candidate Marco Rubio during a roundtable discussion.

To correct some of the problems, Rao said the VOO program has been modified. Applications from recreational boat owners are no longer being accepted, and commercial vessels that were missed on the first go-around are being cycled in, but again, this means some will be cycled out as well.

A host of other complaints against contractors have circulated as well, including workers not receiving overtime and holiday pay, or not being paid at all, and hiring illegal immigrants over legal residents.

Rao said her office has heard the complaints and always takes as much information as possible and sends it up the chain of command. Although she said BP absolutely accepts responsibility for its contractors and the clean-up process as a whole, she did not identify a specific process by which claims against contractors are handled. Calls to the BP media line Friday also yielded no definitive answer.

One of the problems with handling such complaints is deciding if action needs to be taken on a local or regional level, Rao said, because many contractors have crews at multiple sites along the Gulf.

On May 20, Bay County Sheriff’s Office deputies arrested 19 illegal immigrants working for a BP contractor at Panama City Marina. Since then, unconfirmed reports of illegals working for contractors have continued to flow. When problems do come to light, Rao said BP immediately asks employers to show they did their due diligence in preventing the occurrence.

“Do people slip through, absolutely. Do we condone it, absolutely not. Our expectation is when it does happen it is handled immediately,” she said.

<a href="http://www.newsherald.com/news/staging-85636-continues-contractor.htmltag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.newsherald.com/news/staging-85636-continues-contractor.htmlSun, 25 Jul 2010 05:16:17 GMT 00:00">As BP reconsiders staging levels, contractor frustration continues