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A Firing Process That Takes Two Years Is Broken
FEDERAL DIARY
JOE DAVIDSON
marked with a present he doesn’t want.
T
BY RON EDMONDS — ASSOCIATED PRESS
Vice President Biden plans to make several stops in Virginia today.
K President Obama travels to
New Jersey to campaign for Gov. Jon S. Corzine (D), then to New York for the NAACP Centennial Convention, where he is the key- note speaker on the conference’s final day.
K Vice President Biden contin-
ues his unofficial tour of purple states with a hop across the Poto- mac. He’ll be in Alexandria, at the city’s Durant Center, for a White House Middle Class Task Force meeting at 1:30 p.m. Health and Human Services Secretary Kath- leen Sebelius will also attend the event, centered on health-care re- form. Later, Biden heads south to Richmond to discuss the stimulus at J. Sargeant Reynolds Communi- ty College. In the evening, he is the draw at a fundraiser in Henri- co County for Democratic guber-
natorial candidate Creigh Deeds.
K Secretary of State Hillary Rod- ham Clinton, her elbow sufficient- ly recovered to travel, heads over- seas through July 23; her trip will take her to India and Thailand. K The Senate Judiciary Commit- tee continues to consider the Su- preme Court nomination of Judge
Sonia Sotomayor, and today
there is a new wrinkle to the pro- ceedings: lots and lots of witness- es — from the American Bar As- sociation, the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Association of Women Lawyers, a passel of law schools, the Center for Equal Op- portunity, the Independence Insti- tute, one baseball player and a
plaintiff, Frank
Ricci, from a case on which Sotomayor ruled. It is not clear whether the committee can get through all of them to- day; the testi- mony is likely to continue into to- morrow. K Former Trea-
Firefighter Frank Ricci will testify about Sotomayor.
sury secretary Henry M. Paulson
Jr. will testify before the House Oversight and Government Re- form Committee and its domestic policy subcommittee on “Bank of America and Merrill Lynch: How Did a Private Deal Turn Into a Federal Bailout? Part III.”
federalcity@washpost.com
Exactly two years ago, Whitmore was placed on paid administrative leave by the Labor Department, where he is a senior executive in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Now, after the agency paid him $300,000 to do nothing, he learned Tuesday that he will be fired this month for behavior that his bosses say was disruptive and inappropriate.
This is not a story about whether Whitmore deserves to get the boot. It is a story about a bureaucracy that strings along an employee who had 37 years of “acceptable service,” according to his dismissal letter. The bosses prohibited him from doing a lick of work, even from home, causing taxpayers to pay for zilch. Certainly there should be no rush to judgment in cases where a career is at stake. But there is nothing to suggest that Whitmore’s case should have taken so long to decide. Perhaps it’s not only the federal hiring process that is broken. If this is any example, the firing process is in pretty bad shape, too. In fairness to the Obama administration, the case was resolved in a reasonable amount of time after it took office in January. As we’ve reported in previous columns, Whitmore was placed on leave after an altercation with his supervisor that involved allegations, on both sides, of shouting and spitting. He said it was not until April that was he given the specific reasons for his proposed dismissal in a 19-page document.
Whitmore has said that the proposed firing was retaliation for his complaints that corporate officials were allowed to underreport worker injuries. He fought the firing but lost. The “decision letter” he
received yesterday from Deputy Assistant Secretary Donald G. Shalhoub said Whitmore engaged “in a high degree of disruptive, intimidating and inappropriate behavior in the workplace.” Shalhoub’s letter said Whitmore’s offer to submit to stress management counseling “rings hollow.”
Whitmore also offered to work at home for 90 days, during which supervisors could evaluate his performance. That would have
ON WASHINGTONPOST.COM
An archive of Joe Davidson’s Federal Diary columns, including his previous reports about Bob Whitmore’s case, is online at washingtonpost.com/fedpage.
oday is an anniversary Bob Whitmore never sought, and it is being
allows officials to “do more with less.”
The effort is intended to
improve the wellness, morale and productivity of federal employees. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said federal employees sometimes work in “conditions far less attractive than those of the private sector.” “I am committed to joining forces with our federal neighbors to create an innovative and integrated workplace,” he said. “America’s top employers have understood for a long time just how important it is to create a pleasing place to work as a strong draw for recruiting and retaining the best talent in the land.”
FORMALDEHYDE AT EEOC
Here’s an update on the Equal
BY WENDY GALIETTA — THE WASHINGTON POST
Bob Whitmore, an OSHA senior executive put on administrative leave two years ago, will be fired.
given them time to decide “am I worth salvaging or do you want to throw me out with the rest of the trash,” Whitmore said. A lesser penalty, Shalhoub wrote, is insufficient because of “the pervasive nature of your misconduct and the detrimental effect it has had on the efficiency and morale of employees.” The decision to fire Whitmore can be appealed. His lawyer, Robert C. Seldon, said they plan to use an alternative dispute resolution process, which the agency must agree to. After that, Whitmore could appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board. “I just think it was shockingly arrogant and completely illegal,” Seldon said of the firing. “This is not over yet.”
Previous columns on
Whitmore reported first that his case had been left in limbo and then that OSHA planned to fire him.
WORK-LIFE CAMPUS
Four federal agencies have joined forces to create a “work-life campus” that will allow them to cooperate on the development of amenities for their 6,000 employees, such as centralized child care, a farmers market and gardens. The Office of Personnel Management, Interior Department, General Services Administration and Federal Reserve are located near each other, just west of the White
Employment Opportunity Commission headquarters building, where, as we reported previously, employees complained about headaches, dizziness, coughing and breathing problems after moving into a renovated facility at 131 MSt. NE in November. Testing found formaldehyde gas above levels recommended by the National Institute for
Occupational Safety and Health, but below OSHA’s mandatory standard.
COURTESY OF WILL KIRK — JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
OPM Director John Berry says a “model campus,” which four federal agencies have joined forces to create, allows officials to “do more with less.”
House. “By combining our efforts, we can more adequately and economically address the issues of wellness and employee
satisfaction than we could with an agency-by-agency approach,” OPM Director John Berry said, noting that the “model campus”
That’s still the case, according to a memo sent to the staff last month by Stuart J. Ishimaru, acting EEOC chairman. The agency is continuing to take measures, such as increased building ventilation, to deal with the problem, he said. “We all work in this building
and we want our environment to be healthful as possible,” he wrote.
federaldiary@washpost.com.
» Federal Eye
Ed O’Keefe previews a Senate subcommittee hearing today into the rising number of government contracts awarded to Alaska Native corporations. Read more at washingtonpost.com/fedpage.
S
Thursday, July 16, 2009 A21
Age Discrimination Claims Jump, Worrying EEOC, Worker Advocates
By Steve Vogel
Washington Post Staff Writer
With leaders of the U.S. Equal
Employment Opportunity Com- mission warning yesterday that the American workforce faces “an equal opportunity plague” of age discrimination, workers’ advocates urged commissioners to support new federal protections. Workers filed nearly 30 percent more age discrimination charges last year than in 2007. “That is a huge increase, and it will continue going up,” testified Cathy Ventrell- Monsees, president of the nonprof- it group Workplace Fairness, at a public hearing at EEOC headquar- ters in Washington. Among federal workers, only re- taliation was alleged more often in formal complaints as a basis for dis- crimination.
Such numbers led Stuart J. Ishi- maru, acting chairman of the EE- OC, to wonder aloud whether “the public generally realizes that age discrimination is illegal.” Christine M. Griffin, acting vice chair, said, “It’s fair to anticipate age discrimi- nation charges will rise as the fi- nancial crisis plays out.” Rising unemployment has left
older workers vulnerable to layoffs, because they are often stereotyped
by employers as costing more mon- ey and being less adaptable to change, witnesses testified. The hearing included emotional testi- mony from several people who told of losing their jobs because of their age.
“I wouldn’t wish it on my worst
enemy,” said Michael L. Barnes, 46. The EEOC alleges that Barnes was fired from his job collecting trash in Las Vegas by a company that systematically discriminated against older workers. Describing older workers in de- meaning terms remains “socially acceptable,” noted Anna Y. Park, regional attorney for the EEOC’s Los Angeles district office, which has filed suit against Barnes’s for- mer employer, Republic Services in Nevada. “People who would not dream of making sexually provocative state- ments or using a racial epithet will think nothing of calling someone ‘grandpa’ or an ‘old mutt’ or ‘old bag,’ ” Park said. Downsizing decisions are often made by a single manager, and of- ten with little or no consideration to an employee’s experience or con- tributions over the years, accord- ing to Michael Campion, a profes- sor of management at Purdue Uni- versity who has researched the
topic of age stereotypes in the workplace. “You would be amazed at how of- ten they have not even looked at the personnel files,” Campion testi- fied. Witnesses testified that the Age Discrimination Act in Employ- ment, passed by Congress in 1967, has been decimated by several re- cent Supreme Court decisions that curtail the ability of older workers to challenge age discrimination. They urged the commission to issue regulations and guidance that would give workers better legal standing. But unless Congress works to restore protections, the 1967 age discrimination law will be “merely words on paper,” said Lau- rie McCann, an attorney for the AARP Foundation.
“Age discrimination is an equal opportunity plague,” Ishimaru said. “It is not limited to members of a particular class or a particular race. It is not limited to particular industries or particular regions. And it is not limited to a particular gender.” “How often do we hear employ- ers talking about getting fresh blood in?” asked EEOC Commis- sioner Constance S. Barker. “What are they talking about? They want younger and cuter.”
Funding the unwanted, unnecessary alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter would burn through at least $7.2 billion* in taxpayer money – costing our military 53 of the very aircraft it is supposed to power. It’s time to stand behind our troops by targeting this wasteful program for elimination.
THE JSF DOESN’T NEED A $7.2 BILLION ALTERNATE ENGINE.
*Government Accountability 0ffice, March 2007
CAGW.ORG/ENGINE
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