Some employee concerns surface at Department of Labor.
Last month, the Albuquerque Journal reported on a State Personnel Office investigation of the Labor Department. A group of former employees from the department say they lost their jobs without proper warning-which violates state law.
Now it appears there may be more concerns about the department. SFR has obtained a copy of an
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unsigned letter addressed to Gov. Bill Richardson and signed from "veteran Employees of the New Mexico Department of Labor." The three-page letter calls for the governor to overhaul the department and criticizes the management of DOL Secretary Conroy Chino.
DOL employee Yolanda Acosta tells SFR she was part of the group that helped draft the letter and that as many as 20 disgruntled employees stand with her behind this latest complaint, but fear retaliation if they come forward.
"This department has been mismanaged for a long time, but now it has gotten worse," Acosta, who says she delivered the letter to the governor's Albuquerque office on May 8, says. "The workers feel intimidated, that if they present any challenge they're going to be attacked."
Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos says, "The governor's office has no record of the letter but it may well have come in. Since it was anonymous, we don't have a record of it."
Acosta has worked for the DOL since 1991. She also has been, for the last two years, an administrative assistant during the Legislature for State Rep. Rod Adair, R-Chaves.
Acosta and other DOL employees have met on several occasions with the Hispano Roundtable of New Mexico, an Albuquerque-based civil rights group, to discuss their concerns.
Hispano Roundtable Chairwoman Evangeline Trujillo wrote an April 7 letter to Chino about the fired workers and, the letter says, "the climate of mistrust, fear and instability by Hispanic employees at the Department of Labor."
According to Roundtable member Moisés Venegas, he and Trujillo met with Chino earlier this month but Chino made no commitment to address the problems.
"Our concern is that the DOL clarify what's going on and make it right for the individuals that are struggling within the organization," Venegas says. "There are issues that are just as serious, if not more serious, than the issue with fired workers."
Venegas says the Roundtable has personally met with approximately 15 DOL employees who had concerns about the department. The Hispano Roundtable also provided SFR with copies of letters and other complaints it has received from DOL employees.
Such complaints run the gamut from Chino's payment of a $10,000 contract to a Texas consultant for a one-day seminar to the hiring of a relative to his alleged discriminatory treatment of Hispanic employees.
Chino, a former investigative reporter for numerous New Mexico television stations and DOL secretary for nearly 3½ years, says the complaints are baseless.
First, Chino says the $10,000 fee paid for a one-day training seminar in April by Dr. Ruby Payne, a nationally recognized expert on poverty issues, actually saved his department money.
"It didn't seem as cost-effective to send off 120 employees to get training as opposed to bringing in one person," he says. "The response to Dr. Payne's seminar was overwhelmingly positive."
Chino confirms that his wife's sister's husband was hired as a low-level employee for the DOL during his tenure but that he had no involvement.
"He applied like everyone else and got the job on his own merit," Chino says.
Finally, Chino calls the Hispano Roundtable's concern that Hispanic employees are treated unfairly "far-fetched," and notes that a large number of DOL employees are Hispanic, including many of his top administrators.
"I think these allegations are more about the way I manage than anything else," he says. "I lean on my staff pretty heavily. I demand performance and accountability. I want to see results. That's how I manage."
As for the investigation by the State Personnel Office, a representative tells SFR the review is expected to conclude by May 22. In that particular case, several ousted workers complained about how they lost their jobs. The workers were originally employed by the state's Human Services Department, which operates the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program.
In 2005, Human Services began subcontracting with DOL to help run the program in central New Mexico. DOL opted to do its own hiring and let some TANF employees go.
Ten of those employees, through Albuquerque lawyer Justin Pennington, contacted the State Personnel Office in a March 16 letter. Less than a week later, State Personnel Office Director Sandra Perez wrote Pennington back agreeing that the situation warranted an investigation. The Legislative Finance Committee (LFC) also is currently in the midst of conducting a performance review of TANF's effectiveness and efficiency.
SFR also learned this week that Human Services has decided to shift TANF's central New Mexico subcontract with DOL over to New Mexico State University during the next fiscal year.
Human Services spokeswoman Betina Gonzales McCracken says the shift is primarily due to new, stricter federal requirements that now govern the program, though she acknowledges "bumps in the road" regarding DOL's handling of TANF.
She says TANF will first be folded back into Human Services by July before being moved over to NMSU. Until that time, DOL's TANF employees will become HSD employees but will have to reapply to work at the program once NMSU fully takes over. This is the third time in two years that HSD has switched TANF providers in central New Mexico.
DOL spokesman Carlos Castañeda says the TANF employees who lost their jobs during the DOL tenure would be welcome to reapply when NMSU takes over the program.
Chino, who is Native American, says an inquiry by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) found no evidence of discrimination in the case with the TANF employees. EEOC spokesman James Ryan says the agency does not discuss such inquiries and would neither confirm nor deny there had been one.
Chino also points out that more than half of the employees hired by the DOL to staff its TANF program last year were Hispanic.
"We picked and chose individuals we thought could contribute best to the program," Chino says. "No one was ever promised a job."
