MORE than 1,100 California social workers and eligibility workers conducted a three-day strike in Contra Costa County, then voted on Wednesday to extend their unfair labour practice strike by another day.
SEIU 1021 members are protesting against Contra Costa County Executives’ campaign of intimidation and threats against workers who have been outspoken about problems at the Employment and Human Services Department. The Employment and Human Services Department is responsible for the administration of public assistance programmes like CalFresh and CalWorks, in addition to child protective services, among many other programmes designed to serve the disabled, the elderly, and families in need.
During the course of contract negotiations with the County, social workers and eligibility workers have brought to light multiple issues at the Employment and Human Services Department (EHSD).
Workers have informed the public about the County’s loss of $21 million in federal and state dollars to fund public programmes because of Contra Costa County Executives’ failure to fully staff EHSD.
County Administrators have threatened and intimidated social workers and eligibility workers who have spoken out on matters that impact Contra Costa residents and public services.
‘It’s shameful that County Executives are attacking workers who serve Contra Costa’s most vulnerable and trying to stop our efforts to improve services,’ said Dan Jameyson, SEIU 1021 Contra Costa Chapter President and Eligibility Worker on strike. ”It’s time County Executives and our Board of Supervisors prioritise services to our community’s most vulnerable.’
Under California law it is illegal for employers to interfere with, intimidate, restrain, coerce or discriminate against public employees because they wish to exercise their right to speak out and improve working conditions.
SEIU 1021 filed unfair labour practice charges with the Public Employees Relations Board against the County of Contra Costa in August of this year. On September 13th Contra Costa County employees confronted the Board of Supervisors and exposed the County’s failure to spend $21 million dollars to protect children and elderly against abuse, and assist families in need.
According to memos from the Employment and Human Services Department Director to the Family and Human Services Committee, the County has failed to spend funds slated for nutritional programmes, crime victims assistance and sexually exploited children.
With 10.5% of people in the county living below the poverty line, many of these programmes and services provided by county employees are matters of life and death. Champagne Brown, a Contra Costa County Social Service Program Assistant said: ‘When delays occur in the delivery of public programmes, it has devastating consequences.
‘It means someone goes hungry or goes without the health assistance they need. It means someone who’s trying to get the necessary training to get a job misses a life-changing chance. It means a missed opportunity in the fight against poverty in our County.’
County employees, in a report card evaluating Supervisors’ performance, gave Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors a failing grade based on the following reasons:
• Vacancy rates at the county have reached as high as 40% in some departments causing delays in critical services communities need. The services range from mental health to support for children and elderly and many other services throughout the county.
• Multiple violent incidences take place every year in front of County facilities, but the safety procedures in place were originally created in 1976 and do not reflect the current day realities when at work in an office or when employees are on house visits.
• Contra Costa has one of the lowest salary and benefit packages in the entire Bay Area. Many employees work two jobs to afford basic necessities and healthcare. Many individuals that remain are forced to access County healthcare services similar to their own clients due to out-of-reach costs.
• Wells Fargo has been accused of bullying after firing 5,300 workers including some who refused to engage in criminal bank fraud.
Some of these allegedly bullied and harassed workers went to Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and were not defended and some are still waiting to be interviewed by Federal OSHA about alleged illegal activities under former US Labour Secretary Hilda Solis and present US Labour Secretary Tom Perez.
At least five Wells Fargo employees have sued the bank or filed complaints with regulators alleging that they were fired after reporting the opening of customer accounts without their permission.
The suits and complaints, filed between 2010 and 2014, raise questions about how early Wells Fargo knew about such allegations and how it handled them. Wells Fargo was ordered to pay $190m in fines and restitution last month after regulators said its high-pressure sales environment led to the opening of as many as two million customer accounts that customers may not have authorised.
One of the sacked employees Birinder Kaur Shankar, a former Colorado-based customer sales representative who in July 2014, filed a complaint with the Labour Department”s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
She claimed that the bank retaliated against her after she reported in 2013 that local managers were pressuring employees to engage in ‘gaming’ the bank’s sales quotas by opening unauthorised accounts.
In the complaint, Shankar alleged that service managers, branch managers and district managers were ‘well versed in the art of creative selling’ and that customer sales staffers had ‘direct orders to mislead customers’.
‘Little did I know that my complaints to the ethics hotline of Wells Fargo Bank on these practices would be openly and directly conveyed to the very managers who would then start collecting write-up data on me,’ she wrote. Shankar settled with the bank in 2015 for an undisclosed sum, according to Labour Department records. Shankar has declined to comment to the press, citing a confidentiality agreement that was a condition of her settlement.
Another former Wells personal banker, Claudia Ponce de Leon, filed an OSHA complaint in December 2011, alleging that the bank made it ‘virtually impossible’ for branch employees to meet ambitious quotas without cheating. Ponce de Leon was promoted to become a branch general manager in Pomona, California in June 2011 and discovered employees were engaged in ‘excessive gaming’, according to the complaint.
Shortly after she raised concerns about the practice, she was ‘terminated without cause’, according to her complaint. Nearly five years later, her attorney Yosef Peretz said she has only received sporadic communications from OSHA and has not been interviewed by investigators. Only recently did OSHA show more interest, he said.
Julie Tishkoff, a former employee who worked as an administrative assistant to a regional bank president, in a state lawsuit in 2011 alleged that she reported ‘fraudulent banking practices’ as far back as November 2005, involving ‘bank employees forging customer signatures and fraudulently opening accounts’.
Tishkoff said the bank ‘instituted a four-year campaign of retaliation’ that included attacking her job performance and public criticism, according to the lawsuit.
After Wells Fargo was ordered to pay penalties and restitution, former employees filed proposed class-action lawsuits claiming they were pressured to meet sales quotas and wrongfully terminated.
