GELFAND’S WORLD-Call it an Ombudsman or an Inspector General, we need one in Los Angeles City government. The purpose is to do something about the everyday corruption in a system where management looks the other way, where workers are harassed or abused, and where other workers cheat the taxpayers.
My story begins with a part time city worker who arrived at his job at an LA City facility to discover that, although the public were already circulating through the building, the supervisor who was supposed to be present at all times had come and gone, leaving control to an untrained volunteer. This serious violation of safety and workplace rules was duly reported, with little immediate result. Within a few months, the whistle blower was terminated from his job, and as of now, the perpetrator of the walk-off has been promoted. Another day, another outrage.
We've also seen late night television stories involving workers taking long lunch breaks at bars in the middle of working hours, street workers holding shovels but not using them, and the story of an alleged time card fraud that ran into the tens of thousands of dollars. In each case, the city's elected officials got to pretend outrage and disappointment, even as they left the underlying system unchanged.
The idea of the ombudsman, as developed in Scandinavian countries, is a government official who is independent of the chain of command. That way, a citizen who has a problem can go to somebody who is not a slave to the bureaucratic process. The ombudsman is his own boss, and has the latitude to bring problems to the attention of the elected leadership and, when appropriate, to fix problems himself.
I'm proposing something a little different here, but with the common element of an independent inspector who can look into problems that are otherwise swept under the rug. The office I propose for Los Angeles would involve someone who can take complaints from low level city employees -- the kind that are ignored or covered up by the intermediate level supervisors who populate the city's agencies -- and either fix them or report them directly to the mayor.
When I came up with this idea, I ran it by a few colleagues who are involved in the neighborhood council system. They offered a few suggestions and criticisms that are worthy of consideration.
One interesting suggestion was that an employee who has been suffering harassment or abuse should be able to report it directly to his union and get support at that level. I agree that having an organization that is on your side is potentially the most useful approach, but in the case of part time employees -- who are a substantial fraction of city workers -- there is little or no useful representation. And particularly in the case of a part time employee who suffers termination at the hands of a venal boss, the unions seem to be particularly impotent.
There is another point that this question raises. In some cases, including the scandals that television stations love, the problem involves a workplace environment where goofing off is the norm, where the supervisors, such as they are, are in on the game, and where one honest worker feels soiled by the prevalent practice. In this kind of situation, it's not so much an abusive workplace as a corrupt workplace, one in which the supervisors and many of the workers are in on the game.
We've seen examples of this on late night television a couple of times in recent years -- situations where workers abandon their work, misuse city owned cars, or just do nothing while on the job. What's an honest worker to do when the prevalent practice is, in essence, to cheat the taxpayers? The fact that even the troubled worker may eventually get caught and fired adds to the stress.
The problem with this kind of ongoing problem is, of course, that we don't know whether it is confined to just a few instances that are uncovered by Channel 2. Perhaps there are lots of departments where the same kind of problems exist, situations that exist hidden from public view.
The union argument is correct insofar as it applies to isolated supervisors engaging in isolated acts of worker abuse, but when it is a worker who is witnessing improper conduct by other workers in the absence of appropriate supervisorial action, there is currently no recourse for the witness. There ought to be one.
Another comment I received was that we should demand transparency, so any such system should strive towards openness and public reporting as its goal.
Curiously, I am going to respectfully disagree. If some work related offense can be solved at the administrative level in a timely manner, then that would be optimal. There are lots of employment related issues which involve a supervisor providing correction to a worker. For the most part, the public does not hear about these actions because employee privacy is part of our system.
The idea of creating the ombudsman is so that the harassed worker and the whistle blower can have some recourse. After the whistle has been blown, it's up to the city administration to make things right. The point of having the ombudsman or the inspector general is to create the pressure that will force lackadaisical administrators to take action.
One final point that was made to me is that the ombudsman system I'm proposing would overlap to a certain extent with the neighborhood council system. After all, the neighborhood councils are charged with evaluating city services and calling for reforms when they are indicated.
I think that a municipal ombudsman and the neighborhood council system share the purpose of improved government services, but would operate at different levels. The neighborhood councils are not in the position to take sides in disputes between city workers and their supervisors. But at a different level, neighborhood councils are able to recognize systemic problems and recommend changes.
In this case, the neighborhood councils are free to recognize that part time employees of the City of Los Angeles need additional protections that are not provided by their unions or by the city's administrators, and that a policy recommendation is appropriate. That recommendation should be that the city create an independent authority with the power to investigate and intervene. This would also result in improved city services and fewer scandals.
The last recommendation I received from my colleagues was that there should be not just one, but a dozen such inspectors. That way, the vast area of the city would be covered, and someone with a legitimate grievance would be able to be heard without traveling 30 miles each way. I couldn't agree more.
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for City Watch and can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 47
Pub: June 10, 2014
