Watch your words—and hands

Hey, L.A. County employees, listen up. In case you had any doubts, there’ll be no leering, pinching, cat calls, unwelcomed advances or behavior that’s sexually, racially or ethnically degrading in the workplace. And those are just a few warnings specifically spelled out in the county’s new “Policy of Equity” for the first time.

“Everyone is going to be held accountable,” says Lynda Castro, who, after three decades with the Sheriff’s Department, was lured out of retirement to oversee the county’s newly revamped approach to workplace harassment and bias. “If the employees treat each other with respect, then they’re more likely to treat the public in the same way.”

Hopefully, the public will also benefit by having to pay less in rising legal costs from lawsuits filed by employees, who’ve alleged sexual harassment or discrimination because of their gender, age, race or sexual orientation. “For risk management and liability concerns,” Castro says, “we have a policy with real teeth.”

At the heart of the new policy and process is the soon-to-be created County Equity Oversight Panel, comprised of four employment-law attorneys who’ll have full access to complaint investigations and, if need be, order further interviews. The panel will recommend discipline or other corrective actions and make sure there’s follow-through by the individual departments—sometimes a problem under the county’s previous, less centralized approach.

Between 2007 and 2010, the Office of Affirmative Action Compliance, which was previously responsible for ensuring compliance with the county’s harassment and discrimination policy, reported receiving 3,370 complaints. Of those, the office determined it had jurisdiction to pursue 2,110 under state and federal statutes.

The new county program, which will go into effect next month, was modeled after one that’s been in place since 2003 in the Sheriff’s Department, where complaints have been cut in half. Castro was a natural pick to serve as the oversight panel’s executive director because, until her retirement in 2009, she a key player in the sheriff’s efforts to reduce harassment and discrimination, including serving two years as chairperson of the department’s equity panel.

“This is a passion for me, an opportunity put a policy in place for 100,000 employees,” says Castro, 61, who was willing for now to sacrifice a life of traveling with her husband and catching her grandchildren’s soccer and basketball games. “There’s not a lot of things that would cause a retired person to come back to work.”

Posted on 6/7/11