O.C. Health Care Agency Workers File Bias Suit

Three management workers in the county’s Health Care Agency filed a lawsuit Wednesday alleging that they were denied promotions, harassed and retaliated against because of their gender.

Deborah A. Greco and Katherine K. Bish are health supervisors for the county but had their staffs reassigned, according to the lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court by attorney John J. Gulino, who is representing the workers on behalf of the Orange County Employees Assn.

A third supervisor, Suzie L. Kent, was fired in June when the county abruptly closed its radiologic health office, which performed state-required inspections of mammography machines, X-ray equipment and the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

The lawsuit comes on the heels of gender discrimination and harassment complaints on behalf of the workers to the Fair Employment and Housing Agency and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as complaints to the county’s personnel department.

It is the second lawsuit alleging gender-based discrimination to be filed against Health Care Agency officials in the past two years.

Besides the county, the suit names Jack Miller, director of the county’s environmental health division, and Miller’s supervisor, Steven Wong, as defendants.

Miller and County Counsel Lawrence Watson said Wednesday they hadn’t seen the lawsuit and wouldn’t comment. Wong couldn’t be reached for comment. In the past, Miller and Wong have denied that the agency is engaged in discrimination.

“They left us no recourse,” Gulino said Wednesday. “This type of complaint is pretty significant when you’re accusing the county and two of its [managers] of engaging in a course of conduct to discriminate against management employees because they’re women.”

The lawsuit claims the workers were denied supervisory responsibilities, had job duties given to male employees and were directed to report to male subordinates. They also said they were subjected to references about “their inability to perform specific duties and responsibilities due to their gender,” were denied transfers and excluded from meetings, as well as “subjected to physical intimidation” and harassment because of their gender.

Gulino said Wong and Miller retaliated against the workers after they complained about their treatment and lodged sexual harassment complaints against another supervisor. Kent complained that she was passed over for a management position after having been placed on an “A” list for the job.

*

It was the failure to find a supervisor for the county’s radiologic health program that agency officials claimed led them to close the office and turn inspections over to the state. Five people lost their jobs, including Kent, a public health physicist twice passed over for the supervisor position.

The program’s closure prompted complaints by doctors and other medical professionals to county supervisors, who pledged to monitor the state’s inspection performance.

The controversy added to criticisms of the agency that surfaced earlier this year, when state officials threatened to close the county’s program for monitoring medical wastes after a scathingly critical audit.

Last year, Health Care Agency Director Tom Uram became a defendant in a gender-based discrimination lawsuit filed by former county Finance Director Eileen Walsh. The suit, set for trial in November, contends Walsh was the subject of repeated derogatory comments and retaliation in the years she worked for Uram, who demoted her when he became acting county administrator after the county’s 1994 bankruptcy. Uram has denied wrongdoing.