High Tension In A Company Town

By Elaine Rivera/Aiken

Willar and Josephine Hightower had always been good company people in a sturdy and steady company town--until about 10 years ago. Willar had worked his way up to the position of engineer, proudly receiving excellent evaluations. Josephine, a senior computer programmer, relished her white-collar job. Their employer was the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., a sprawling nuclear-processing plant where the Federal Government stores some 35 million gal. of radioactive waste. It was the largest employer in South Carolina, and the jobs paid well. The Hightowers saw themselves as team players, partakers in the co-prosperity of a racially segregated but placid Southern town. Says Willar Hightower: "People get along for the most part."

Then he noticed something happening--or not happening. Despite the positive feedback on the job performances of the couple, their careers had stalled. They had done everything they believed they were supposed to have done. Both have college degrees, both worked hard, both were waiting their turn for advancement. But it never came. In fact, white people they trained were being promoted above them. "The only difference was, they were always white and I'm black," says Willar Hightower. "Eventually, you realize it's discrimination." Willar and Josephine Hightower are now incipient rebels, taking part in a class action that has the potential of upending the town. Willar, who is on the Aiken County council, says local officials have remained uncharacteristically reticent about the lawsuit. "Not a word. No one has asked a question," says Hightower. "When there's absolute silence if you walk into a room, that says a lot, doesn't it?"

But there is a strange, nervous quiet too from much of Aiken's African-American community, which makes up 45% of the town. While prayer services in local black churches have been held for the cause, anxiety levels are higher now that the couple has become a driving force in the lawsuit against Westinghouse, charging that blacks, who constitute about 22% of the 11,500 employees, have systematically been denied promotions and been kept at the most hazardous jobs. Only 400 of the site's 2,500 minority employees have joined the Hightowers. "There are a lot of us who are afraid to step in," says an African-American worker who would identify himself only as a production operator. "We support them, but if they lose that suit, we think it's going to get a lot worse for us out there." Some plaintiffs say they have been chastised by workers who feel the lawsuit will "rock the boat" for other African Americans and anger the executives who run one of the state's most powerful companies, with dire consequences for Aiken.

Westinghouse spokesman Will Callicott says the charges have no merit, and he says company officials believe the courts will rule in their favor. Westinghouse also disputes the lawsuit's contention that only 1% of senior staff and management is black. The company, however, has not produced statistics to counter the claim.

Nevertheless, a labor movement of 400 people in a right-to-work state is a troubling novelty in Aiken. "Nothing like this has ever happened in this community before. They've never seen so many of us unite," says James Walker, who, until receiving medical disability in 1995, was an "H-Line" operator, a risky job in which workers manually process vials of radioactive plutonium as they are encased. In a 1977 incident, according to personnel documents and information acknowledged by the company, Walker inhaled one of the largest doses of Plutonium-238 in the site's history. Walker, who filed an additional lawsuit, says that for years he tried to get transferred from the production line after he learned he had received a maximum lifetime dose of radiation. Whites, says Walker, were moved in and out of similar positions. Westinghouse officials say there was "no health risk associated with the intake he had." But Walker, who suffers from severe migraines and other ailments, doesn't believe it. He says he received a letter from Westinghouse asking him to donate his body to science to study the effects of plutonium. "They told me if I ever had a tooth pulled, they wanted that too!" Walker declined. The company says the request is standard procedure.

Most city officials are hoping the troubles will all go away and are offering the plaintiffs no encouragement in their lawsuit. "I really don't know much about the lawsuit except for what I've read in the paper," Aiken's mayor Fred Cavanaugh insisted to TIME. Hightower knows the legal wrangle is on the minds of the town's Establishment. "They never discuss it in public, but I'm sure they discuss it privately," says Hightower. "All the air would go out of Aiken if it were not for the Savannah River Site." And now the town is breathless in anticipation.