EMPLOYEE ABUSE AT UC DAVIS
We have all heard about child abuse, spousal abuse, elder abuse and animal abuse. What about employee abuse? What about employers who have unwritten policies that allow supervisors/managers to abuse the employee on a sustained basis?
What do I mean by abuse? Types of abuse such as harassment of all kinds (sexual, gender, racial, age and just plain harassment), intimidation, retaliation, favoritism, nepotism, health and safety violations, falsification of documentation, and research misconduct are just a few of the abusive activities that are allowed at the University of California at the Davis Campus and Medical Center.
The Unions file grievances. These grievances are denied most of the time at Steps 1, 2 and 3 before they end up in arbitration. This process can take up to a year or more. Many employees just give up. They quit or retire just to get away from the monumental stress that is put on them by supervisors and management.
The UC Whistleblower and Research Misconduct complaint systems are a joke. UPTE (University Professional and Technical Employees) has filed several whistleblower complaints a year ago. Nothing is done. Often times the complaints are just forwarded back to Human Resources where the problem was not taken care of to begin with. It is a vicious circle with no end. The Vice Chancellor and Chancellor do nothing. Sometimes there are investigations of sort. More often than not these investigations come up with not enough evidence to do anything. You can have first hand witnesses and documentary evidence to something and this is never good enough. Then many times the witnesses that are listed in the complaint are never contacted. The investigations are often one-sided, management sided. A Research Misconduct complaint was filed recently. The results came back insufficient evidence of wrong doing. The witnesses were never interviewed.
Many employees are working out of classification. Many employees are working in a classification that does not adequately describe their jobs. Some classifications are dumping grounds for jobs with no specific classification title. These people will never move up in the classification series because they are not doing the job specifications to begin with. Employees in two different classifications are doing the same job and getting paid differently. Often times “favorites” are reclassified upward. Management will reclassify everyone except the un-liked employee, who eventually will be laid off because he/she was the lone person in the classification. The un-liked employee often is the one who complained about a policy violation. Thus, retaliation is often seen in a layoff.
Workplace environments can be highly hostile. There is a doctor at the Medical Center that harasses, yells and intimidates employees on a daily basis, including in the operating room. The supervising doctor has covered this up for years. Other physicians and nurses refuse to work with him. Some employees quit because they cannot take the stress any longer. Upper management sits on the investigation for months. If this had been a staff employee, he/she would have been terminated long ago. Management who do wrong are NEVER terminated.
Another doctor at the Medical Center held up time sheets that were to go to the insurance company for disability payments. This was reported to Human Resources and nothing was done. I am told by a DA that this is a crime and should have been reported. While the employee was on disability leave she was laid off. The time sheets were sent to the insurance company immediately after the layoff.
An employee that works with toxic chemicals in two laboratories does so without air conditioning and extra ventilation. It gets so hot in the labs during the summers that the machines shut down. The supervisor opens containers out in the lab instead of under the hood and throws chemical contaminated ice on the floor (which employee had to clean up) exposing everyone to the chemicals. After an excessive workload that was to be done in a short period of time (the employee was threatened to lose her job if it was not done by the time the supervisor returned from his vacation overseas), this employee is now very sick and it appears that it might be from chemical exposure. My information request to UC has not been forthcoming, which is usual. This is the lab where research falsification occurred and UC found no wrong doing. The witnesses were never interviewed.
A twenty-five year employee was pushed out of her job by a new employee who had become a favorite of the new director of a facility on campus. Sexual harassment and intimidation were reported by the employee, but the director chose to ignore the problem. This director is new on the job. She was promoted to the position recently even though there were many people in opposition to her becoming the new director. UPTE asked for an investigation giving names of people when were witnesses. The witnesses were not called and the result of the investigation was no wrong doing. Meanwhile the employee took early retirement because the stress was affecting her health.
And it goes on and on and on. It does not stop. I could describe many, many more cases. And then there are hundreds I have never heard of. There is no accountability for management. Management does as it pleases regardless of laws and policies. UC is incapable of monitoring itself as it will not find fault within their management ranks. Mismanagement and the breaking of the law are covered up on a sustained basis.
The Whistleblower complaint system needs to be taken away from UC. Congress was wrong to give it to them in the first place. There needs to be an outside agency set up to monitor UC management. UC has too much power and they use this power in an abusive and unaccountable way.
Susan McCormick
President, UPTE-CWA Davis Local