MYONIA GIBBS, District administrator, state Department of Fair Employment and Housing

Myonia Gibbs was 14 and the daughter of a Tennessee coal miner when she saw a grocery clerk make fun of an elderly black woman. The memory stuck; she would remember it through college at East Carolina University, as a housewife and later as a community activist, and it remains with her here in this cramped warren of offices in a seedy state office building in Santa Ana, where she spoke recently with Times staff writer Michael Flagg about running the Orange County district of the Department of Fair Housing and Employment.

Do you get a lot of flak from both sides, community activists and business?

Sometimes we have differences of opinion because we’re investigators, we’re neutral fact finders. Some groups prefer that we’d be more proactive, and some businesses would prefer we stay out of their business. It’s pretty difficult to please everyone, but we get pretty good cooperation from both.

What’s the likelihood of the average complaint being valid?

To be on the very conservative side, I’d say it’s maybe one in three cases where there’s an actual violation of law.

How many complaints do you get?

About 60 a month. But some of those people elect to go to court instead.

And the majority of complaints to the department concern what types of discrimination?

The majority are pregnancy complaints, somebody saying they went on leave and the employer had hired someone else and wouldn’t let them come back. Then sexual harassment. Then there’s all the rest. Most of those complaints concern being fired, although the cause may vary by race, sex or national origin. Most of our complaints concern jobs and not housing. People who feel discriminated against when they go to buy a house sometimes decide they don’t want to live there anyway. But when you lose your job, it’s your livelihood, and you’re more likely to do something about it.

What’s your relationship to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission?

We share the work with EEOC when a person complains to both, and both agencies have jurisdiction. The agency that gets the complaint first actually investigates it. The difference is the extent of what we cover. We cover more employers. EEOC only covers businesses with 15 or 20 employees or more for age discrimination, while we cover businesses with at least five employees on most discrimination issues and every employer in cases of harassment.

So there are more protections against discrimination under California law?

Yes. State law, for instance, requires an employer to provide a pregnant employee with up to four months’ unpaid disability leave. That’s broader than federal law.

But you have fewer resources these days now that state government is having budget problems, right?

Yes. As with many other state agencies, we’ve lost money and people. We’d normally have eight consultants investigating complaints; right now we have four. That kind of a cut has an impact.

Is that why I heard your receptionist just tell someone they’d have to wait until June for an appointment to come in and talk to you people?

Yes, that and the fact that there’s been an increase in the number of complaints here and statewide. It’s not something we’re happy with; it’s something we just deal with the best way we can.

And that long wait is just the beginning, right?

After we talk to them, and if they sign a formal complaint, they can expect to wait nine months before they will hear from us again in terms of the case being investigated. I don’t think that discourages people from complaining, but it is frustrating.

There’s another problem, you say: The department can’t levy punitive damages or compensatory damages for emotional distress in really egregious cases. Why is that a problem?

Right now we can only award lost wages or out-of-pocket expenses. So we have a much higher number of people withdrawing their complaints in order to go to court. And a lawsuit winds up costing employers more than if they tried to resolve the matter through us; it also adds to the courts’ burden. There’s no incentive to keep those cases out of court. Take a person who has been sexually harassed, left that job and immediately found a job paying the same salary; he or she really didn’t lose any wages. That person would not be entitled to a remedy if they came through our department. But in court they can get compensation for the distress of being harassed. We can negotiate that in a settlement, but we don’t have the authority to order it. There’s an effort in Sacramento now to give the commission this power.

How much of the discrimination that you encounter is system-wide in companies and how much is merely the fault of individual managers?

In most of our cases it’s not really systemic; at least we don’t have any evidence to show it is. Most complaints, in fact, involve someone at a lower level violating the law. We do find companies that could care less there are laws that prohibit discrimination in employment. But those are the exceptions these days.

Orange County being as conservative as it is, do you get a disproportionately large number of complaints of discrimination here?

I really can’t see a significant difference between employers here and where I came from, San Diego County. I think discrimination is fairly common around the state, but I don’t see a lot more of it here. I do find that companies here are more likely to turn a case over to their attorney to handle.

On companies’ commitment to equality. . .

“The majority of companies have a commitment and try to meet the terms of the law. But they’re not always successful, although at least there aren’t many intentional violators.”

On what companies can do. . .

“The biggest thing is have a policy that says you’re an equal opportunity employer and that discrimination is prohibited by corporate policy and by state and federal law and violations will be dealt with promptly.”

On Orange County. . .

“Because our economy has so many white-collar workers, we see a lot of white collars in here filing complaints.”

On an increase in complaints. . .

“My guess is it’s the economy. When jobs are hard to find, people are more inclined to come in and file when they lose one.”