African-American employees of the city of Los Angeles have had it with the myriad manifestations of racial discrimination they suffer in their various workplaces and they have united and implemented a plan of action to deal with the problem as soon as the bells stop ringing in the new year 2010.

The first part of that plan is under way: A series of discussions with the mayor’s office as to exactly what offenses his city departments perpetrate against their Black employees. And the second part of their plan is happening now: It’s me telling you — Angeleno taxpayers of every race, color and creed — all about the mess Black people have to put up with to deliver city services to you.

African-American employees of the Los Angeles city departments of planning, transportation, public works, cultural affairs, neighborhood empowerment, general services and housing have banded together to deal with similar racist workplace policies with regard to hiring and promotions, work assignments, disciplinary action, sexual harassment and different treatment.

“The city claims to have a ‘no tolerance to discrimination policy,’ and yet the fact seems to indicate that racial discrimination against African-Americans runs rampant in various departments throughout the city,” said Dwayne Wyatt, a city planner active in the Black employees organizing efforts. “It’s time to hold the city to its word.”

A startling example of the kinds of employee abuses for which Wyatt demands the city be held to account include the pervasive sexual harassment that is said to be so bad in the General Services Department that one particular Black female custodian has openly pondered suicide as the means of ending the insidious sexual intimidation with which she is being bombarded. This woman’s — and other women’s — plight is common knowledge in General Services and people there say nothing is being done by the department or city officials to stop it. Sexual harassment is the biggest complaint of Black women working in General Services.

The citywide group of Black employees finally succeeded in opening talks with the mayor’s office in November over city racism after weeks of trying to set up meetings with Deputy Mayor Larry Frank, the official apparently in charge of such matters. Wyatt said Frank told him he was unable to meet which the overall group earlier because “he was busy trying to solve our problems by addressing one agency at a time.”

While Frank was addressing one agency (or department) at a time, the combined group developed its own agenda that included creating a Blacks In Government (BIG) chapter of the already established Black City Employees Association. “We had to,” Wyatt said. “The BCEA has shown no interest in dealing with issues of racism and have, in fact, belittled all our claims of racial discrimination.”

The planner said the same is true about the city’s SEIU local, “which we observe to be totally on the side of management.” Wyatt said the General Services employees are especially fed up with the lackluster representation they are receiving from SEIU. “According to them, SEIU does not want to do anything about their charges of sexual harassment and their allegations of racial discrimination. The stories of Black women’s abuse in the General Services Department makes you want to cry,” Wyatt said. “That is why we are strong supporters of Michael Davis and Bob Aquino and the EAA (Engineers and Architects Association’s union). It is the only union that has shown a willingness to recognize and confront racial discrimination within city department,” Wyatt said.

In addition to expanding their organization, the Black employees are contacting attorneys to investigate the option of filing class action suits against the city of Los Angeles, as well as drafting a complaint with the U.S. Attorney General’s Office about discriminatory working conditions within the city’s employ. Not only that, the Rev. Al Sharpton has already offered his services to help the employees air Los Angeles’ filthy linen throughout the country. Wyatt and the workers are inclined to accept Sharpton’s offer and have arranged to meet with him to work toward that end.

The Black employees’ inability to get promoted or get favorable work assignments in the Transportation Department has already been reported in a three-part Bottom Line series I wrote earlier this year. The blatant and pervasive institutionalized racism of the city’s Planning Department was detailed in a multi-part series I wrote four years ago. Con Howe, the department’s general manager for more than 12 years, suddenly retired at the conclusion of that series, but the situation for Blacks and Latinos has gotten worse ever since Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa appointed Gail Goldberg to replace Howe.

Everything that was racially wrong in the Planning Department when Howe ran it is still wrong today. And Goldberg has thrown some new racism into the pot. For example, Goldberg’s first official act after taking the job was to dismantle the South Central/Southeast Task Force, a group created by the Mayor Tom Bradley administration within the Planning Department to address issues of inequities in planning resources by providing planning assistance to underserved communities. Goldberg declared the task force no longer in existence and decreed that no Planning Department funds were to be spent on task force operations. Howe ignored the task force, true, but at least he let it exist.

Within the past two years, the City Council gave the Planning Department funds to add more than 40 new entry-level positions. Of all the new staffers hired, not a single one of them was an African-American planner. Under Goldberg, White people continue to get all the jobs, all the promotions and all the advantageous work assignments.

The most undesirable positions in the Planning Department are the five sections of the case processing units where city planners sit in dead-end jobs and process papers. Workers here have no opportunity to use their intellect and talent and move up the organization. The case processing units are currently manned by 35 city planners, of which 12 are Black, 10 are Asian, 8 are Latino, one is Persian and 4 are white. There must be something seriously the matter with these four whites, since the Planning Department’s various policy divisions are populated entirely by white planners.

There is much more to be said about the goings-on in the aforementioned eight city departments and I intend to spend the winter months on the subject. After all, I can’t let Rev. Sharpton scoop me.

Next week I will discuss the deputy mayor’s meeting with the employees and what the mayor is doing about the problem, as well as the SEIU’s response to claims of indifference toward the General Service workers’ complaints, and anything else that comes my way. Pressure has been building among Black city employees over these issues for the past three years and they’ve pointedly excluded me from their discussions during that period. Now, they’ve invited me in. They’re ready to pop.