"Fired Black Employee":Is Racism 'Business as Usual' at Kaiser Permanente NW?

By Fired Black Employee e-mail: belchicca@yahoo.com

 At the Kaiser Center for Health Research although reported racist behavior of supervisors and decision-makers have been acknowledged by its direction, the organization readily expends unlimited finances to maintain a virtually all white professional level staff.

 The author is this article has been inbroiled in a longstanding (albeit loosing) battle with this corporate giant who, rather than confront the reported perceptions of minority employees who havereported concerns of racist attitudes, actions and behaviors of its managers and supervisors, by even its Direction, it elects to spend countless thousands of dollars, hours and energy defending them - and in turn their racism. Neither the EEOC, BOLI or the Federal Courts appear much interested in a minority's, especially,a Black's perception of bigotry and its accompanied discrimination. The author worked for Kaiser CHR for two years. In that time she, and a Mexican American colleague suffered through continuous intimidation, threats and micromanagement. Within this period neither of the two were hired or promoted into any of the collective 50 positions for which they applied (for a number of peculiar though always feasible reasons - namely incompetence; the Black was (the only) Master's level staff with 12 years of professional clinical experience, the Mexican received a Bachelors with Honors, "but those people can't...). However, their blond colleague of 22 years, still in graduate school managed to be promoted to a management position with three months of hire. The description of unceasing abuses including scapegoating, confidentiality policing, unreasonable schedule flexibility, and production standards, and signing of pre-disciplinary contracts inflicted during the summer of 2000 could fill volumes. After all staff but she left the department, Project Investigator, Dr. Greg Clarke, and Project Manager, Stephanie Hertert, refused to provide backup assistance to that who complains. When she requested 'reasonable accommodation' due to depression she was asked to quit. After she reported her 'perceived' concerns to Human Resources, no wrong-doing was found. Effectively, nor so by the EEOC, BOLI or the Courts. Therefore, one may reasonbly say that racism is a protected commodity and surely 'business as usual'in Kaiser NW, Oregon. (Please see Federal Civil Case 'Bell vs. Kaiser' for further info).