Most Wisconsinites know that Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial Act 10 increased the amount of wages that public employees must contribute to their health insurance and pensions.
But Act 10 also radically altered protections for public employees in the workplace. Instead of guaranteeing work rules and protections in union contracts, state agency heads can establish their own policies and workers are only protected by civil service rights.
Four years after Act 10’s passage, its impact is being felt in worksites across the state.
In Milwaukee, managers in an office of the state Department of Health Services (DHS) had faced allegations of nepotism and favoritism, as the Shepherd reported in June 2013.
Back then, four workers at the state DHS Milwaukee Enrollment Services (MilES), headquartered at the Coggs Human Services Center on Vliet Street, accused Chief Operations Officer Vanessa Robertson of hiring her friends and relatives and giving them promotions and bonuses while passing over more senior and more qualified employees.
Robertson’s son, Gavin, for example, was promoted and given a raise when he had worked just 11 months on the job, selected over employees with years of experience. He was also among a handful of employees who were given a $2,500 bonus, part of Walker’s attempt to raise morale among state workers. In addition to son Gavin, Robertson’s sister, nieces and other friends and relatives work at MilES.
The whistleblowers have since pulled their original nepotism complaints from the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC). Instead, in March three of the whistleblowers accused MilES managers of retaliation. Their complaints state that they’ve been treated unfairly and retaliated against since filing their initial complaints and haven’t been considered for promotions.
But those allegations don’t tell half of the story.
Sources told the Shepherd that the MilES workplace is the site of bullying and intimidation. Shockingly, some workers who spoke out were mailed anonymous letters that featured a photo of boss Robertson along with the message: “Awe, u didn’t get the job But god don’t like ugly.” They say the state police were brought in to investigate but that went nowhere.
Sources also tell the Shepherd that as the nepotism cases were heating up, a supervisor talking on her cell phone in the office referred to the whistleblowers as “some silly asshoes” within earshot of one of the whistleblowers. The supervisor allegedly called the nepotism complaints “bullshit” and indicated she wasn’t happy about having to appear as a witness in the WERC hearings. Management took no action.
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The sources say that whistleblowers have been disciplined for minor infractions as well. Another whistleblower asked to alter her start time by a half an hour to accommodate her child care and was told she could change her schedule only if she would relocate to an office across town. She declined that offer. And another was made to jump through hoops when requesting a short leave of absence to deal with a family matter. Robertson ultimately denied the request.
A representative from DHS didn’t respond to the Shepherd’s request to comment on the retaliation complaints.
Milwaukee County is the only one of 72 counties in which the state government runs public assistance programs for low-income residents. MilES is charged with managing all of the state-run income maintenance programs for county residents, such as food, health care and child care assistance.
The state DHS took over Milwaukee’s social service programs in 2009, when Walker was county executive, because under Walker “Milwaukee County’s performance fails national and state standards,” according to then-DHS Secretary Karen Timberlake. Critics said Walker had run the programs into the ground to provide a justification for privatizing them. Instead, the state stepped in.
‘A Cesspool’
The MilES office allegations didn’t surprise Marty Beil, executive director of AFSCME District Council 24. He said there’s been a huge change in workplace culture at state worksites since Act 10’s implementation.
“Every state work site is a cesspool,” Beil told the Shepherd. “I’m not being facetious here. Workers are concerned with money and benefits but what has been happening at the worksites, the culture that has been established, has been more disruptive than these workers not receiving adequate pay increases.”
Beil said bullying and intimidation are rampant throughout state agencies. He said supervisors try to bully and harass outspoken workers so that they’ll quit or ultimately be fired. Worksites are short staffed, leading to high amounts of overtime and threats to privatize operations, he said.
“It’s like somebody switched a switch in 2011 and these supervisors and administrators all became ogres,” Beil said.
Also common is the lowering of qualifications for professional jobs, Beil said. For example, the Milwaukee Bureau of Child Welfare, run by the state since 2002, [Correction: the state took over this program in 1998.] has faced complaints about its handling of suspected cases of child abuse and high staff turnover. In response, it’s changed its hiring requirements for those who take initial assessments of child abuse. Previously, access and initial assessment specialists were required to be social workers. Now, those with a high school diploma can be considered for the job.
“What message does that send to the rest of the workers who have master’s degrees there?” Beil said. “And who’s going to get blamed when a person who has a high school diploma makes a wrong decision about suspected child abuse?”
Whistleblowers at Risk
Prior to Act 10, public employee unions’ contracts with the state covered wages and benefits, but also worksite rules and worker protections. But all that went away when the union contracts expired and state agencies set up their own policies, which Beil says are continually changing, leading to confusion in the workplace.
“If a problem pops up and they don’t like the way it was dealt with under the current work rules, well then on May 1 there will be a whole new set of work rules,” Beil said. “June 1 you might have another new set of work rules. There’s no consistency, which obviously traps workers. If you don’t know what you’re supposed to do or what you’re not supposed to do you get trapped in the middle of all of that.”
Beil said that conflict resolution procedures have also been scuttled. State workers such as the MilES employees can take complaints to the WERC, but Walker-appointed commissioners consistently overturn any decision made that favors an employee, he said. Whistleblower protections that were part of union contracts were eliminated, too.
“God bless them,” Beil said of state whistleblowers. “There are no protections. There are statutory protections but they are pretty loose and the employer finds ways around them. The whole concept of whistleblowing in state government has been really chilled by not having any protections.”
Shannon Hassell is also familiar with MilES’ supervisors’ rough handling of whistleblowers. Hassell was a MilES employee from September 2011 to September 2014, when she quit after she was disciplined and had to serve a five-day unpaid suspension for questioning why she was denied a leave of absence to return to school. But she said she was disciplined because managers were trying to harass her after she’d spoken up about how Robertson’s relatives and friends were given special treatment at MilES. She also said she was targeted for being active in the union.
“It’s good to work there if you’re a relative,” Hassell told the Shepherd. “You’ll have an easy time. It’s their playground.”
In contrast, Hassell, a former Sheriff’s Office employee, said that workers not in the clique were bullied, stressed out and quitting in droves because they work in a hostile environment.
“There were days when I went home crying,” Hassell said.
Hassell is filing a complaint over her discipline and suspension, claiming that it was an unfair form of retaliation for speaking up on the job.
