Complaints about racism in the city of Los Angeles’ workforce increased since last week as the effectiveness of the employees’ union has come into question and as employment in the mayor’s office has been added as a ninth city department accused of discriminating against African-Americans and women.

Allegations were made in Part I of this series that sexual harassment is one of the greatest problems affecting Black women employees of the General Services Department and that their union, SEIU, has been unresponsive and/or ineffective in dealing with it. A longtime union official insists they have; a longtime union member insists they haven’t, and the city hasn’t said a word either way.

Linda Dent, vice president of SEIU Local 721 and chair of the union’s African-American Caucus, said the union “takes issues of racism, discrimination, sexism and sexual harassment extremely seriously.” She added, “This is a union built on the principles of fighting for equality and justice for all.”

Dent said the case of a specific General Services custodian mentioned last week as having been sexually harassed had been resolved “years ago with the vigorous advocacy of SEIU,” and she went on to say: “We have a long track record of protecting our co-workers from unfair treatment. Their union is always there for them and always will be.”

Erica Nicholson, a senior custodian supervisor who has worked for the city for 23 years, identified herself in a letter to the editor as being the first Black woman in General Services to bring charges of sexual harassment against a manager, back in the late 1990s. “I can say from my own experience that any woman who goes through this can go to the union. When SEIU found out, they did everything they could to help.”

Nicholson continued: “Since I won my case, there’s zero tolerance for sexual harassment in General Service. Any man who does this to a woman now, they get rid of the man.”

Patrice Shirley, a 25-year General Services employee and SEIU member who was sexually harassed and stalked by two fellow workers within the past two years, vehemently disagrees with Dent’s and Nicholson’s assessment of their union’s effectiveness with this and the full range of other abuse and discrimination problems in that department.

Shirley, who is one of several city custodians who are SEIU members with whom I spoke, said the working conditions at General Services have become markedly worse in recent years and that an actual, full-blown sexual assault has occurred in the workplace since Nicholson won her case.

Shirley, who knows Nicholson, said: “I don’t know why she’s saying this; the union may have been helpful to her, but certainly not to me and many others. And this claim of ‘zero tolerance’ to sexual harassment is a complete lie.”

Shirley said she was actually stalked on and off the job by a smitten fellow worker to the point where other workers saw it, noted it and recognized the potential danger she faced from it. The man was fired, not because of his obsession with her, but because he got into an altercation with a supervisor.

“A couple of years ago, I was badly harassed by a co-worker who kept saying some vulgar things to me, which other people heard and tried to make him stop,” Shirley said. “A supervisor heard him saying those nasty things to me and the supervisor reported it to personnel. I was called into a meeting with the personnel director and later with the assistant general manager and they did nothing about it. In fact, they thought it was funny! And yeah, they got rid of him; not because he was harassing me, but because he was drunk on the job.”

“Management at General Services do whatever they want, any time they want and any way they want,” Shirley continued. “They do the employees dirty and if they can cover up stuff, they will cover it up. The union does try to a certain extent, but they work for the city too — some of them are on the mayor’s commission — and there’s a limit to what they can do.”

The fearless and outspoken Shirley said she had to take grievances beyond the union to the state’s Employment and Equal Opportunities Commission in 2007, 2008 and 2009 and they were all resolved in her favor. “But I sought the union’s help with two problems and I ended up with untrue absences noted in my record which were actually sick days in one case and a five-day suspension in the other case. That’s what I got when the union helped me,” Shirley said.

“So, what are we paying the union for?” Shirley asked. “They act like they don’t want to help you anyway. For us in General Services it’s like who do you go to for help?”

Larry Frank, deputy mayor of neighborhood and community services, has had three meetings with Black city employees since the issue of widespread municipal racism bleeped on his radar last summer. He said his role in resolving the problem involves his getting the deputy mayors responsible for offending department to meet with those department heads and employees and thrash out the issues.

Frank said he has Bud Ovrom, deputy mayor for economic development and planning, dealing with the problems affecting the Planning Department; Jaime de la Vega, deputy mayor for transportation, handling the head of the Transportation Department with racism complaints over there, but there is no mayoral authority to deal with the manager of the General Services Department because that deputy mayor’s position is “in flux.”

I asked Frank which deputy mayor would be responsible for dealing with racism in the mayor’ office. “That would be a conversation the employees and the community would have to have directly with the mayor,” Frank said.

Both sides might as well start talking now because the mayor announced Tuesday that he hired Brian Currey as his new counsel — meaning now Antonio Villaraigosa’s executive team is composed entirely of White men. Los Angeles’ top leadership includes no African-Americans, no Latinos, no Asians and no women.

Villaraigosa hired Currey to replace Tom Saenz, who resigned earlier this year to head MALDEF. It was assumed in the community that Saenz would be succeeded by another minority, but no. Currey’s selection fuels already simmering anger over the look of the mayor’s office. We will discuss this next time.