Reports on a lawsuit filed against the university last summer recently surfaced regarding an alleged hostile work grievance in Facilities Services.

In June 2007, the State Employees’ Trades Council-Unified filed a hostile work grievance against the university. The grievance was filed by a group of skill workers through the union who all have a common welfare issue. About 15 trades workers from Sacramento State’s Facilities Services are involved in the grievance.

SETC represents the state workers who are employed by the University of California and California State University systems. The grievance was filed against three employees in facilities management, one of which, Daryn Ockey, received a pay raise in January.

The case is still pending, and since then three workers who were involved in the grievance have quit. All of them have been working here 10 to 20 years, said Patrick Hallahan, chief consultant for SETC.

Hallahan said Ockey was promoted to manager of building trades. Along with additional duties came the additional pay.

“Two people in Facilities Services received 5 percent increases for equity and for assuming additional duties. One of them was a person who had been named in a grievance by one of the staff unions,” said Kent Porter, associate vice president of Human Resources.

Porter said these raises came into effect July 1, 2008.

The filed grievance revolved around a number of alleged threats and reprisals from management directed to different skills workers within different shops on campus, including the paint shop, the sheet metal shop and the auto shop. The testimonies in the grievance stated Dayrn Ockey and two other facilities managers as the authors of these threats. Other employees within facilities management were involved, but their names have not been disclosed.

“At other state agencies, when claims of a hostile work environment are made, people charged with this kind of harassment are terminated,” Mullen said, sitting on the edge of his seat with a determined look in his eye. “I will admit, since we’ve tried to bring pressure on them, there has been a slight change, but the problem is still there.”

Mullen has been working at Sac State for 10 years and has not received a pay raise, but has received a slew of teamwork awards, “good job” awards.

Hallahan expressed concern regarding the underlying foundation of Sac State, saying Facilities Services runs “all the things that pump life into this campus… and our people are all the people that keep it running.”

Hallahan said it was bad business for Sac State to have such problems going on in such an integral part of the university.

“It’s the community’s campus, but people don’t see these things happening under the surface,” Hallahan said.

He suggested that Ockey may not be the best person for the job.

“People don’t have to love him, but they should at least respect him, and he should be able to respect them,” Hallahan said. “We’re not here to get anybody.”

Associate Vice President of Facilities Services Ron Richardson said he is not at liberty to talk about the grievances as they are still under investigation.

He said managers were assigned more duties, and therefore were awarded compensation for it.

“There isn’t anything out of the ordinary,” he said. “Our managers acted appropriately in the workplace.”

In 2008, a private attorney looked into the case and retrieved testimonies from the different workers who filed the grievances against Ockey. Since then, the case has been appealed to CSU Chancellor Charles Reed’s office and is still pending.

Manzella, who has been at Sac State for 27 years, has not received a raise in his time working as an electrician for the school. Also a SETC union representative, Manzella is involved in another suit with the school over what he says is a violation of the California education code.

Section 89517 of the education code states that wages “for laborers, workmen, and mechanics employed on an hourly or per diem basis” must not fall bellow the rate of which other laborers in their field in the local area are being paid.

Anne Morrison can be reached at [email protected].