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PLAINTIFF'S EXHIBIT I /DECORATING CENTER Who says drywall work hasn't changed over the years? Fred Hormuth in front of decorating retail store in Evansville, Ind. FRED HORMUTH'S father, Marion- --now deceased--got into the drywall installation and finishing business a lot earlier than most contractors who do that type of work today. Marion Hormuth started his painting contracting firm in Evansville, Ind. in 1928, but it was not until after World War II that the new demand for cheaper housing created a new market for drywall contractors and gradually pushed the plaster business aside. Marion Hormuth went to California to study the new automatic drywall tap ing and finishing tools that were being manufactured there and brought some of them back to Evansville with him. Hormuth's painting company was probably one of the first companies east of the Mississippi to have the new automatic tools. Today, Fred Hormuth, who in herited the business from his father, heads the Painting and Decorating Contractors of America Drywall Com mittee. The past president of PDCA's Indiana Council has built a thriving drywall contracting and decorating re- 34 AMERICAN PAINTING CONTRACTOR BON - 02166 'fi tail business on the foundation his father started and is probably one of the most knowledgeable men in the country on the subject of drywall in Second generationstallation and finishing. At the PDCA convention in Washington D.C. in March, Hormuth presided over a drywall contractor,seminar on ' drywall that featured a talk by Gene Johnson of San Fran Fred Hormuth,cisco, Calif., representative of the company that manufactures the automatic drywall tools which talks aboutHormuth's father discovered on that trip to California over 25 years ago. Hormuth was also the author of a his business, December, 1975 article in the Professional Painting and Coating Ac the asbestos problemtion magazine in which he urged that more painting contractors should ' try finishing wallboard joints instead of and the presentmerely painting over joints that another contractor has already state of the artfinished. Hormuth's own company is equipped to not only finish drywall joints, but to install the metal studs and the wallboard itself. On some commercial jobs, Hormuth has even last trade to get to a job site, the put together a complete decorating painting and decorating contractor is "package" which includes not only usually the last trade finished, painting and drywall installation and Hormuth reasons, and probably is finishing, but the installation of only now beginning to experience the acoustic ceilings, wallcovering and economic slowdown that other build carpeting. Hormuth said that the trend ing trades felt much earlier. The in drywall contracting is toward economy is starting to role again, but packaging in which a contractor offers Hormuth estimates that there will be a a complete range of decorating two-to-three month lag before his men services to his customers rather than actually get on the job site to work. concentrating only on drywall Hormuth keeps about 25 to 30 men finishing. He said thepackaging con employed in drywall installation and cept has helped his own company finishing. He said that his company through a rather slow economic period does mostly commercial work since this spring. the residential work has been taken He said his firm has much more over by the smaller--one- or two-man work under contract this spring than it contractor. In the residential market, did this time last year, but at present, price still dictates who gets the work, there is not that much work to go Hormuth said, while the smaller con around--at least in the Midwest. tractors are not equipped to handle Hormuth figures that the business the larger commercial jobs. slowdown means that the recession Hormuth has discovered a surpris has finally caught up with him. As the ingly good market in drywall repair of JUNE, 1976 35 Hormuth's father, Marion, uses old-style drywall taping tool which operated on battery power. Picture was taken sometime in mid-HMD's, according to Hormuth. the interior of old churches. He said that the walls in many old churches are in need of repair and usually cov ering the old walls with wallboard is the only solution that makes economic sense. In many of the churches, the complex pattern of archways on the ceilings requires a contractor with Hormuth's expertise. Some of the jobs Hormuth's men have tackled have been quite large. He recalled a 10-story apartment building his men had worked on in which they installed several tons of wallboard and finished the joints. Trucks loaded with gypsum board would start pulling up at the job site early in the morning, unload and take off to get another load, he said. The wallboard was lifted to the upper floors of the building by a crane, he said. A church job his men undertook re cently called for the installation of metal studs to support the drywall that were 50 foot tall in some places. No straight wooden studs 50 feet long could have been found to meet the re quirements of the job, Hormuth said, and even if wooden studs had been available, the general contractor, rather than Hormuth's men, would have installed them. Installing metal studs is usually left to the contractor 36 AMERICAN PAINTING CONTRACTOR A or subcontractor who handles the drywail work while the installation of wooden studs is usually the territory of the general contractor, Hormuth explained. One of the problems with drywail work is finding good men, training them to operate the equipment and keeping them, Hormuth said. Most of his competitors in the Evansville area are men who once worked for his company and who later broke away and went into business for themselves. He said his firm has trained skilled drywail mechanics "by the dozens." The asbestos problem The drywail industry has undergone a gradual revolution since the day Hormuth's father got into the business. Concern over the presence of airborne asbestos particles as well as other materials in the dust at drywail job sites and pressure from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has led most of the major manufacturers of joint compounds to remove the asbestos from their products. Last October, OSHA released a new proposed standard for concentrations of airborne asbestos that was even stricter than the present standard formulated in June 1972. (An emergency asbestos stan dard was established in Dec. 1971.) The proposed standard would among other things lower the permissible ex posure to 500.000 fibers per cubic meter (0.5 asbestos fibers per cubic centimeter for an eight hour time-weighted average exposure and also reduce the permissible ceiling exposure to five million asbestos fibers per cubic meter (5 asbestos fibers per cubic centimeter) for any period ex ceeding 15 minutes. Monitoring and record keeping procedures would also be increased by the proposed standard. The standard would not apply to the con struction industry, but medical con clusions reached in the proposed stan- Hormuth's firm has trained drywail mechanics by the dozens dard will be used in the formulation of a separate asbestos standard for the con struction industry. The preparation of the construction industry's asbestos standard is already underway. The date for comments on the pro- . posed standard closed last April although some comments were expected to drift in late. No hearing dates have yet been set for the standard although the dates will probably be set within the next two months. As of mid-May, almost 190 comments on the proposed asbestos "Are you color blind or something? That's not willow green. " JUNE, 1976 37 BON-02169 standard had been received by OSHA, according to William Warren, industrial hygienist for OSHA based in Washington D.C. OSHA is still awaiting an inflationary impact statement about the economic effect of the proposed standards which is necessary before the hearings can begin, Warren said. Separate but equal According to Warren, OSHA's goal is to establish a separate asbestos standard for the construction industry that will provide the same protection from asbestos fibers for construction workers as the proposed standard would for workers in other industries. The breathing of asbestos fibers has been linked with such diseases as asbestosis, a diffuse interstitial, nonmalignant scaring of the lungs; bronchogenic carcinoma, a malignancy of the interior of the lung; mesothelioma, a diffuse malignancy of the lining of the chest cavity and of the abdomen and cancer of the stomach, colon and rec tum. Companies which use asbestos in their products have been attempting to refute some of the findings of studies cited by OSHA in arguing for a stricter asbestos standard. Some of the private studies have tended to show that the research cited by OSHA was not very realistic in determining how many asbestos fibers a drywall worker is likely to breathe in the course of his work, Hormuth said. He re ferred to a study reported in the January/February issue of Drywall magazine which indicated that concen trations of asbestos particles at many drywall work sites surveyed were not as high as indicated by research studies cited in the proposed OSHA standards. "It now appears that the situation is not quite as serious as it appeared in December 1971 (when the emergency asbestos standard was proposed)," Hormuth said. Although the manufacturers of joint compounds have taken the initiative in removing the asbestos from their products, there have beep complaints that the asbestos-free compounds are not quite as reliable as some of the asbestos containing compounds. Gene Johnson, Hormuth's guest at the PDCA convention reported that some re search indicates that the use of automatic taping and finishing tools versus taping and finishing by hand tends to keep dust levels at a job site at a minimum. Labor restrictions in certain parts of the country prevent the use of the automatic taping and finishing tools. Comparisons between New York City, where there are tool restrictions and Miami, Florida, where automatic taping and finishing tools are permitted, showed that where taping and finishing is done by hand, the dusting problem was greater, Johnson told those at the workshop. Restrictions hurt labor Hormuth told the American Painting Contractor that the tool restriction hurts labor in another way. Although more men may be hired to do drywall work by hand, the automatic tools make the drywall contractor more competitive and able to get more work, he said. Hormuth said that the drywall busi ness has changed in other ways. Even the automatic taping and finishing tools are much improved over the ones used by his father. One of the first taping tools his father used, he recalled, operated by battery power. Hormuth remembers having to recharge 40 or 50 batteries at the end of a workday to get them ready to hook up to the automatic tools Che next workday. Hormuth and his wife, Mary Ann, have four daughters and he laments that he does not have a son to take over his business one day. But he quickly added that he is happy that his two eldest daughters and his wife do help out at his decorating products store occasional ly. 38 AMERICAN PAINTING CONTRACTOR . -v-,.v*' ,i /_ } * -5>. J 1 / i1' . M , iW 'f\1. '&' '*,. - ;V* ,. :5.- < ';<>' "'j >; ,'i- ^ ('.'Vt' if -i '/ '' `^V ., v \ ^;`v. 5 * . ." u';. ' -" ' V ; r* -'tv?-* , -i*\. . - r- -fy ' '` '. TvSf .`<1;Vs!i'i'Vif-V-i' * 'i'-Vs'x-X 2" * . " < ^" . K*' `i'O** -W.i,{ V i` -.V'V';*', V'-'\. y '1,` f >^Vi*` ' .- - ' ' .. v'V,'** j'- ` ..- . '' *-.' . ' ** , '-!_;,, - 'wf/vv/ v. ;#', .'-' ; '.' ' - ?' ' . *% ' s v'. ./ / INDUSTRY NEWS Largest United States flag pai nted at Ken nedy Space Center When last we visited painting contrac tor Demetrious Dourakos of Merritt Island, Fla., he had just donated his own personal bicentennial project to the city of Cocoa, Fla.: three 41 x 85 foot American flags painted on the side of that city's water tower. (See American Painting Contractor, December 1975) Dourakos is back in the news. This time he topped his original act by paint ing a 209 x 110 foot flag on the south wall of the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. According to Lee R. Scherer, director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's John F. Kennedy Space Center, it is the largest American flag ever depicted. A red, white and blue bicentennial symbol is to grace the north wall of the Vehicle Assembly Building. Both symbols will be visible from a dis tance of 10 miles. "The flag will be a major attraction at the U.S. Bicentennial Exposition on Science and Technology at the Kennedy Space Center, Scherer said. The exposition, conducted on the theme. "Third Century America," is scheduled to be open from May 30 through Labor Day this year. More than 500 gallons of paint were used in the completion of the project and rollers and brushes were used while ap plying it. The building was first cleaned with a high pressure alkaline wash to re move chalk, grease and din. Dourakos said that painting the flag on the side of the Vehicle Assembly Build ing took about three weeks. You may re call that he donated the flags painted by his Royal Painting Co. on the side of the water towers in Cocoa. The flag at the Kennedy Space Center was done for a fee by the Apollo Painting Co., another firm in which Dourakos has a business interest. NPCA criticizes asbestos standard The proposed OSHA standard for asbestos (See article on drywall problems, page 341 does not take into ac count the limited exposure of workers in the paint and coatings industry to the material and could include materials not intended to be regulated under the stan dard, the National Paint-and Coatings Association told the Occupational Safety and Health Administration recently. NPCA filed comments with OSHA on the proposed asbestos standard on April 9. The standard as proposed would allow workers to be exposed to an average of 0.5 fibers per cubic centimeter of air over any eight hour period instead of the present limit of 5 fiber per cubic centimeter. The standard would also de fine a fiber as a particle of asbestos longer than 5 micrometers. It would also require employers to maintain employe medical records for 40 years or the dura tion of an employe's, career plus 20 JUNE, 1976 s BON-02171 years. Inc. and Cosan Chemical Corp.) I find In its comments, the association ex that sufficient basis and opportunity now plained that asbestos is an essential com exists to reconsider the matters alleged ponent of many coatings, sealants, in- the aforementioned statement of Mat caulks and glazing compounds for which ters Erroneously Decided and Errors compatible substitutes are not known. Committed. Accordingly, the foregoing "The nature of the use of asbestos in motion for reconsideration is hereby the paint and coatings industry, consist granted." ing of varied short and intermittent The NPCA and the suppliers of periods in which the possibility of ex phenyimercurials were given until April posure exists," the NPCA stated, "is 16, 1976, to file briefs with the EPA. such that it cannot be lumped into the NPCA President Robert Roland said, general mining and manufacturing of "We appreciate this unprecedented op asbestos. Regulations issued by OSHA portunity that the administrator has must be responsive to these uses and given us to show that his order of should not impose unnecessary and inap February 17, 1976 was not based on sub propriate restrictions." stantial evidence in the record and was Train to reconsider not in the best interest of the general public. We hope this reconsideration mercury ban of Feb. 17 proceeding will lead to a reinstatement of the use of phenylmercuriai com In response to motions filed by the National Paint and Coatings Association and three of its member companies, En vironmental Protection Agency Ad ministrator Russell Train has granted a pounds as in-can preservatives and as mildewcides in water-based paints and thus avoid, costly, protracted litiga tion." PPG hosts meeting motion to reconsider his ban on the use of mercury compounds as in-can pre for painting contractors servatives and as mildewcides in water- Ten painting contractors from across based paint and coating products. Early the United States were delegates to the in March, the EPA granted a temporary 1976 meeting of the Pittsburgh Paints stay order on the February 17 order professional contractors marketing which had prohibited further production council. of mercurial pesticides. The two-day session was the third This recent order for reconsideration, such event sponsored "by the Coatings issued March 26, 1976, covers only and Resins Division of PPG Industries, mercurial pesticides and mercurial makers of Pittsburgh Paints. The councii mildewcides used in water-based paint met at the firm's Pittsburgh head and coatings. The status of registrations quarters. of mercurial pesticides for other uses, in "These meetings give us the op cluding as a mildewcide in oil-based portunity to listen to the painting con paints, has not been changed by the tractors' problems and discuss possible March 26 order. The effective date of the solutions," said C. S. Wells, the cancellation was delayed by the stay, division's market manager of pro however. fessional products. "We review the in In making the announcement. Train formation gained, take appropriate ac said, "In view of the stay of the tion and report our progress to the coun February 17 order and in consideration cil members during the coming year." of the allegations of factual and legal er At the third bicentennial council rors by the movants (NPCA, Troy meeting, each contractor participated in Chemical Corp.. Tenneco Chemicals. discussions of overall business condi- 64 AMERICAN PAINTING CONTRACTOR