Union Calls for the Ouster of 2 Top Employment Development Officials

The California State Employees Assn. Saturday called for the removal of the two top officials of the Employment Development Department, blaming them for failing to improve conditions that the union said have demoralized workers in numerous local offices.

The call for the removal of department director Kaye Kiddoo and deputy director Mark Sanders was contained in a union report presented at a Long Beach hearing by the Senate Industrial Relations Committee, which is investigating complaints of EDD mismanagement.

The union report, demanding that the two officials be fired or forced to resign, said Kiddoo and Sanders have “little or no control over their managers (or) supervisors,” have not taken action against managers who abuse authority, have intimidated employees who appeared before the union’s investigative committee and “have been aware of all the problems in EDD but have not dealt with them.”

According to the union’s report, Kiddoo once responded to a complaint that high workloads were creating stress by saying, “If you didn’t have stress you wouldn’t get up in the morning.”

Kiddoo did not attend Saturday’s session, but Sanders said after the hearing that he and Kiddoo will take the testimony as “constructive criticism.”

EDD officials have contended that workers’ problems are not related to job conditions. But on Saturday, about a dozen EDD employees from throughout the state testified that workloads and insensitive, harassing styles of management had created undue stress.

The worst case occurred March 31, 1986, when Fidel Gonzalez Jr., a worker at the Garden Grove unemployment office, shot and killed his boss, Louis H. Zuniga, and then turned the gun on himself. Both men died instantly.

A note found in Gonzalez’s breast pocket read: “I hope this will alleviate a lot of stress from my co-workers and set them free.”

Other EDD employees told the hearing that co-workers had died from stress-related heart attacks, and the state employees association’s report said one employee was confronted by a gun-wielding, disgruntled claimant.

Jean Berry, an employee at the EDD office in Long Beach, described Saturday how fellow worker Ed Choice grew progressively ill on the job and died of a stroke last January. Choice, 37, was taken to the hospital after being reprimanded by administrators, Berry said, and when she called paramedics she was told by her boss to tell them not to use the siren and to come in the back door--an order she said she disregarded.

The union report also recommended that the Senate committee increase EDD’s budget, require that disciplinary action be taken against any manager who abuses authority and provide stress training for all EDD employees.