Violence, Turmoil in Jobless Offices Lead to Changes

Nearly a year has passed since Fidel Gonzalez Jr. walked into his boss’ office in the troubled Garden Grove unemployment office and fired three bullets into the chest of Louis H. Zuniga Jr. and then turned the pistol on himself.

A dozen people watched the men die in a double tragedy that has since become an emblem of an agency in distress. For although Gonzalez and Zuniga died last March 31, they left much trouble behind.

Union officials, family survivors and the men’s co-workers blamed their deaths on stressful working conditions and an indifferent state bureaucracy. And since then, one more employee of the state Employment Development Department has died of what his Long Beach co-workers and union officials insist was a “stress-related” illness. And in two other EDD offices, two other workers were severely beaten by outraged clients.

Although EDD administrators say the deaths, attacks and employee complaints are “unrelated” and not a product of work stress, officials nevertheless have taken steps to address some of the complaints.

In recent months, the embattled agency has taught employees techniques for working with angry clients, designated more than 50 of its 134 field offices statewide as high security risks and begun installing safety devices and barricades to guard workers from public assaults.

“When you consider how long we’ve been in operation . . . we’ve really had a remarkably low number of serious incidents despite the fact that we deal with hundreds of thousands of people each year,” said Valerie J. Reynoso, an EDD spokeswoman in Sacramento. “But I have to say our concern heightened dramatically as a result of these several unrelated incidents.”

Workers and officials of the California State Employees Assn. acknowledge that life in the Garden Grove office has improved considerably in the last year. But many workers remain haunted by the murder-suicide.

“Talking about it still brings stress to me,” said Cecily Law, who works in the employment services division of the office, finding jobs for the unemployed. “I think it’s going to be a long time . . . before we are going to be able to relax about it. It’s, it’s just going to take some time.”

A union-sponsored study is under way to measure the effects of stress on the lives of employees in EDD’s field offices. And a legislative hearing is scheduled for April 4 in Long Beach to investigate complaints of continuing stress and alleged management misconduct. The hearing will be sponsored by state Sen. Bill Green (D-Los Angeles) in his capacity as chairman of the Senate fiscal review subcommittee, which reviews the EDD budget.

On the morning of March 31, 1986, Gonzalez, 53, arrived for work early. In Zuniga’s office, the two exchanged words, and then Gonzalez shot his 50-year-old boss. Without a moment’s hesitation, he then put the gun to his own temple and fired.

A note found in Gonzalez’s breast pocket--”I hope this will alleviate a lot of stress from my co-workers and set them free”--provided the first clue that all was not right in the office.

In the last months of his life, Gonzalez apparently had been trying to transfer out of the Garden Grove office. Friends and relatives say he seemed to be under a lot of stress, but they were not sure just why he killed his boss and then himself.

But tales quickly began to emerge about Zuniga. Garden Grove workers described Zuniga--who was known as a tireless community activist and loving father--as a tyrant. Paramedics had been called to treat workers who had collapsed on the job. Once they were called three times in one week.

Workers and union officials said stressful conditions existed elsewhere in the vast EDD system, and in the year since the Garden Grove killing there have been other incidents:

- In San Bernardino, about two months after the Garden Grove tragedy, the EDD office manager interceded in a fight between an enraged client and an office worker. The manager, Dick Schendel, was hit over the head and required four stitches.

- Four days later, in San Francisco, a man apparently upset because he was denied unemployment benefits returned to the EDD office with a loaded semiautomatic rifle and a hatchet. He pointed the rifle at an EDD employee and pulled the trigger several times, but the weapon misfired. The employee’s supervisor managed to pull the gun away, but not before getting hit in the head several times with the hatchet.

- And in Long Beach in January, the death of EDD employee Edward Choice, 37, from a heart attack is being attributed by some to harassment by his supervisors. Choice, an employment program technician, had been rushed to the hospital the day before after being dressed down for 90 minutes by supervisors, witnesses said. He suffered a stroke during or shortly after the confrontation, and died of a heart attack the next day.

“They harassed him to death,” said Marcelle Talbert, Choice’s sister. Choice’s family has hired attorney Fred M. Blum to file a claim against the state.

EDD officials have denied any management or agency responsibility in the death.

Since the Garden Grove murder-suicide, 52 EDD offices throughout California have been identified as high-risk branches in need of security improvements. The EDD has allocated $1 million for security measures, most of which have not yet been taken.

In Garden Grove, Zuniga was succeeded as manager by Richard Johnson, whom workers describe as a gentle, “fatherly” man.

In January, the families of Zuniga and Gonzalez filed wrongful-death lawsuits against the state, charging that government officials could have prevented their deaths.