Investigation Reveals ‘Supervision Problems’ in Torrance Bus Service : Transit: Drivers complained of sexual harassment and racial discrimination by managers. City officials decline to say if disciplinary action has been taken.

An investigation into allegations that several managers of Torrance’s municipal bus system engaged in sexual harassment and racial discrimination has revealed “fundamental supervision problems,” according to City Manager LeRoy J. Jackson.

The finding, disclosed in a recent letter Jackson wrote to disgruntled drivers, has stepped up the drivers’ calls for disciplinary steps against the supervisors.

City officials decline to say whether such action has been taken, pointing out that personnel matters are confidential, but drivers say that no disciplinary moves have been made.

They say they plan to protest the alleged lack of action by staging a demonstration this month at City Hall.

“The city manager let us down,” said driver Tido Voorhees. “He told us he would handle what was going on . . . (but) none were disciplined. Not one.”

The city manager’s office ordered two investigations in December, after drivers leveled a range of allegations against superiors.

One of the inquiries, into sexual harassment complaints by two female drivers, was conducted by private investigators hired by the city, but its results have not been released.

Patrick Astredo, president of the Torrance local of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said sexual harassment complaints from as many as seven employees should have been considered.

“They should have looked at more than two,” Astredo said.

The second investigation, conducted by Jackson’s office, focused on broader issues concerning management’s treatment of employees in the city’s Transit Division. In his letter to drivers, dated April 23, Jackson said his office found “fundamental supervision problems.” Transit supervisors and assistant supervisors, he wrote, “have, in the past, used improper language with (drivers) and behaved improperly with respect to them.”

The letter said the supervisors in question “will be counseled and trained to avoid repeating the inappropriate conduct.”

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Contacted at his office, Jackson declined to comment. Several drivers, meanwhile, branded Jackson’s investigation “a whitewash.” They say strong disciplinary action was required, given the seriousness of the offenses.

Voorhees said supervisors had frequently used obscenities when giving the drivers instructions. Voorhees, who is black, says supervisors reserve such treatment for minority employees.

While the use of obscenities has been curtailed, drivers say, transit managers have retaliated against whistle-blowers. Several of the drivers, they say, have had their hours reduced and have been selectively assigned to poorly functioning buses. And several have had their paychecks reduced due to supposed administrative errors, drivers say.

One driver, Vollie Haskin, said city officials indirectly condone racial attacks by failing to punish offenders. She said she complained to city officials last October that a fellow employee in a passing truck yelled at her, using a racial epithet.

“He yelled it out . . . and then the (truck) pulled away real fast,” said Haskin, who is an African-American.

An investigator hired by the city interviewed Haskin about the incident. “But that’s the last I ever heard,” she said.

Such complaints come at a time when the city is under pressure from the federal government to improve minority hiring in its police and fire departments.

Last November, Department of Justice officials said the Torrance police and fire departments engaged in a pattern of discrimination by not hiring enough blacks, Latinos and Asians. In addition, federal investigators found that black police employees have been subjected to derogatory comments from white supervisors.

Torrance officials dispute the findings but have been meeting with Department of Justice representatives to negotiate a consent agreement that would head off a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city.

Royce Esters, president of the Compton branch of the NAACP, whose members include many of the bus drivers, said “the whole city” needs investigating. “It’s like a plantation system here, the way they treat people,” Esters said.

About two dozen drivers gathered at an employee union hall last Sunday for a rally attended by Compton NAACP officials and Compton City Councilwoman Patricia Moore. The drivers aired their allegations about verbal and sexual harassment of female employees.