Oregon Public Agencies Rack up Civil Rights Complaints

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

By Shelby Sebens, GoLocalPDX Reporter

Civil Rights

Photo Credit: Alan Cleaver via Compfight cc (image cropped)

Oregon’s public agencies have been racking up civil rights complaints, with government departments receiving more than 400 complaints over the past five years. The employee complaints range from age and racial discrimination to unfair working conditions.

And high among the worst alleged violators are agencies charged with helping the state’s most needy: from Oregon’s Employment Department to the Oregon State Hospital, a state run psychiatric facility for adults, according to an analysis by GoLocalPDX.

Civil rights experts affirmed that the public sector is not immune to workplace discrimination, but pointed up the need for government bodies to do better.

“One would hope that public employees and public employers should feel that they hold themselves to a higher standard," said Ashlee Albies, a Portland civil rights attorney with the law firm Creighton and Rose.

The Bureau of Labor and Industries provided GoLocalPDX data on civil rights complaints filed against public agencies over the past five years.

Slideshow Below: Oregon's Worst Civil Rights Violaters

GoLocalPDX looked at the top 10 agencies with the most complaints from 2009 to 2013 and then determined the top offenders per capita by looking at the total number of employees at each agency. The Human Services Department had the highest number of complaints by more than twice the next agency, but it also has the largest number of employees.

Brad Avakian

Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian

“Oregon has strong civil rights protections – and it’s important that the public sector uphold the same high standards as private employers,” Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian said in an emailed statement. “Any employee in Oregon deserves a place to turn if they believe that they’re being treated unfairly or having their civil rights violated.

“Our agency approaches each investigation with a duty to determine the unique set of facts so that we can protect people’s rights and hold public agencies accountable if they’re skirting civil rights laws,”

The workplace complaints range from sex discrimination to unfair treatment based on age, disability and other factors. Some cases were closed for lack of evidence, some are still under investigation, some have been settled and others were sent to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for further investigation.

The agency with the worst record when comparing violations with the number of employees was the Employment Department.

Work Overload

That agency saw an uptick in complaints between the 2009-2013 time frame because it was the height of the recession. In 2010 the state gave out a historic number of unemployment payments, Employment Department spokesman Craig Spivey said.

“It was just kind of a tough time with that,” Spivey said. “That’s where we saw a lot of these start to come up, because of working conditions."

In May 2013 the department started a worksite committee where management of the Employment Department began to work with the union representing employees to improve working conditions, Spivey said.

“We’ve seen a dramatic drop in these,” he said of complaints.

Avakian said BOLI helps agencies understand the civil rights laws through the state’s Technical Assistance program “to avoid potential problems and taxpayer costs.”

In the Public Eye

Even though there is a sharper eye on the public sector employers with records being available to the public and elected officials to be held accountable, employees still feel hesitant to report discriminatory actions, Albies said.

“I hear a lot of stories every day from people and a lot of people don’t end up wanting to file claims because there are fears of retaliation,” she said. “People don’t want to place their jobs in jeopardy.”

She said public employers are not immune from the type of behavior that leads to workplace discrimination.

"I think you see the same kinds of claims everywhere,” she said. “It’s interesting when a public agency or a public entity is acting as a private employer you see similar patterns.”

Spivey pointed out that about half of the cases that were filed over the five years ended up getting dismissed for a lack of evidence.

But Albies argues that doesn’t necessarily mean a problem didn’t occur.

“I don’t know that every claim that’s dismissed has no merit,” she said. “It doesn’t mean discrimination didn’t happen. It’s important to not invalidate those.”

Related Slideshow: Slideshow: 10 Oregon Agencies with the Most Civil Rights Complaints

GoLocalPDX looked at the top 10 agencies with the most complaints and then determined the top offenders per capita by looking at the total number of employees at each agency. The Human Services Department had the highest number of complaints by more than twice the next agency but it also has the largest number of employees.

See how Oregon’s state agencies rank when it comes to civil rights violations.