Northpinellas: Worker charges city staff with bias

CLEARWATER -- A secretary in the city's building and maintenance division has filed a discrimination complaint claiming she was sexually harassed by a co-worker, then retaliated against with poor job evaluations after reporting it.

Katherine Palisano also says in her complaint that her boss refused to accommodate her after she began having medical concerns about a pregnancy earlier this year. Palisano had brought her supervisor a doctor's note instructing that she could not be on her feet.

"It's just been an emotional roller coaster, and it's just totally wrong," said Palisano, who filed her complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in late June.

Palisano said her problems began after she came to work for the city in March 2000, when a male maintenance worker started making lewd remarks to her.

Tensions boiled over in November, when the co-worker pushed his body against Palisano in a city break room, according to a statement Palisano gave the city. Palisano yelled, drawing the attention of her boss, building maintenance supervisor Jim Wood.

Rather than report the incident to city investigators -- as required by city policy -- Wood told the two employees to avoid any contact with each other, according to city documents.

In January, Palisano complained that the male worker had violated the order, honking and waving at her when driving by and approaching her to talk about his pay. Palisano accused him of again making "full-length bodily contact" with her.

Wood called the city's human relations department and was told he should have reported the harassment issues weeks earlier, records show. Wood attempted unsuccessfully to argue in a chain of e-mails that he had followed city policies.

The same day, Palisano received a job review that stated she was having "strained" relationships with other co-workers.

"For more than a year and a half, I had proved my performance with excellent reviews, until the fallout of this situation," Palisano said.

Palisano talked with Keith Ashby, who oversees the General Support Services Department. Palisano got the impression that Ashby didn't take her seriously.

"His response was that his wife was going through a pregnancy and was very hormonal and full of tears, and what I'm going through must be similar," Palisano said.

Also, she said, Ashby joked about the situation by pushing into another male employee in front of her desk and saying jokingly, "Please don't report me for harassment."

Ashby said he doesn't remember either incident. "That doesn't sound like me," Ashby said. "I don't recall any of those things happening."

Ashby declined to comment in detail on Palisano's concerns last week, citing the instructions of city attorneys. Wood also declined to comment.

The city's human relations department found cause for concern about the incidents that Palisano had reported, but nothing that would rise to a violation of the law, according to a February report.

After the report, the maintenance worker whose behavior had been objectionable was warned not to have any further contact with Palisano, and the city's maintenance department was given training to prevent harassment problems. But that wasn't the end of the controversy.

According to Palisano, she spent much of February out sick because of concerns about her pregnancy. When she returned to work, Palisano said Wood refused her request to stay at her desk, off her feet, rather than deliver building maintenance requests.

When that request was denied, Palisano felt obligated to go on unpaid family leave in March -- a few months before she had planned -- to ensure her pregnancy would be okay.

At about that time, records show, Ashby and Wood began planning to fire her. In a memo, Wood documented numerous failings of Palisano since January, accusing her of everything from forgetting to transfer phones to rooting through other people's desks.

Palisano said the actions didn't happen or were taken out of context.

Then Ashby was warned by the city's human relations department that firing Palisano without giving her an opportunity to address shortcomings could look like retaliation. She wasn't fired.

But Palisano's husband, Bill, who also works for the city's building maintenance division, got his first negative job review in several years.

City records show that Mr. Palisano had "highly successful" ratings for years and was nominated by his supervisors as an employee of the month last fall. But in April, a review noted that Palisano had poor relationships with co-workers who didn't want to work with him.

The Palisanos both went to Human Resources Administrator Paul O'Rourke to try to settle how Katherine Palisano would return to work. She asked for back pay for having to take family leave early, as well as a guaranteed transfer to another department.

O'Rourke offered Palisano a few weeks of additional paid leave before the birth of her baby. But to get that, O'Rourke said, she would have to sign a waiver of her legal rights to bring claims against the city for either sexual or medical discrimination.

Steve Sarnoff, who heads the city employees' union local, urged Palisano to sign the waiver, she said. Sarnoff said he didn't want any controversy to surface before commissioners consider appointing interim City Manager Bill Horne the city's permanent manager this week, Palisano said.

"I'm doing everything I can to make sure there's nothing negative that could be used against Bill," Sarnoff said in an interview last week.

Palisano said she felt pressured and did not sign the waiver.

A few days later, the St. Petersburg Times began requesting files about the issue. City officials decided to grant Palisano nine more weeks of unpaid administrative leave from her job to have her child. It is unclear which department she will work for after that.

In mid June, Palisano retained an attorney and filed her EEOC complaint.

Palisano is not the first woman to complain about working in the General Support Services Department, which maintains all city buildings and about 1,700 pieces of equipment ranging from garbage trucks to leaf blowers, as well as handling small city construction projects.

Michelle O'Neal, the city's grant writer, filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last year, alleging she was not paid as much as male counterparts in the city. At the time, O'Neal was making about $38,000 annually as she acquired more than $20-million a year in grant funding for the city.

In a statement to the city, O'Neal quoted Ashby as telling her he didn't feel women with children should work and suggested Ashby didn't seem to take her request for equal pay seriously. Her requests for a pay adjustment went for several weeks without a response, until O'Neal eventually discovered her request was still sitting on Ashby's desk, O'Neal complained.

After O'Neal filed her EEOC complaint, Ashby warned her she would have a rough road ahead of her from that point, she said. Ashby said he remembers making a similar comment but didn't mean for it to sound ominous.

In the end, EEOC investigators were unable to conclude there was any violation of federal equal pay laws. O'Neal was nevertheless given a 10 percent raise. But she recently resigned to move with her family to Birmingham, Ala., Ashby said.

Claudette Leadbetter, another assistant to Ashby, left her co-workers a letter when she resigned in April 2000 explaining that she found working for Ashby to be stressful, uncomfortable and unhealthy for her personally.

She went on to detail in an 11-page journal the days and times that she observed that Ashby appeared to be leaving the office early or calling into work from home.

Ashby dismisses Leadbetter's letter as the rant of a disgruntled employee.

Interim City Manager Bill Horne said last week that he has told Ashby to prevent additional equal opportunity complaints from appearing, by eliminating any factors that could lead to "differences of perception."

Although Horne declined to comment on the current complaint, he said, "I don't generally ever make light of issues like that."

Back to North Pinellas news

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright

Special Links

Mary Jo Melone

Howard Troxler

From the Times
North Pinellas desks