From a former Kaiser IT employee:
I was employed by Kaiser Permanente in Walnut Creek California in the Information Technology Department.
During my employment there I developed a comfortable working relationship with a Kaiser programmer. She confessed that Kaiser had an official senior management policy against the hiring of any Hispanics in the Information Technology department.
Intrigued, I asked why and she stated that upper management felt that Latinos were too much trouble and Kaiser could hire individuals of Asian ancestry that would not complain or make any trouble for them.
Considering that a substantial amount of Kaiser’s business is conducted in California — a state with a substantial Latino population estimated in excess of over twenty five percent — I am confident that Kaiser would not want it to be public knowledge that they intentionally discriminate against this very large and influential group.
California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, himself a Latino, will no doubt find this news amusing.
The question Latinos need to ask themselves before they join this HMO is that if Kaiser feels they are too inferior to work within this organization can they really trust Kaiser to do the correct and ethical thing when it comes to their children?s medical treatment?
I am sure this will be a soul searcher. This is the first time in my twenty year programming career that an employer actually admitted they actively and intentionally discriminate against a specific group.
That’s stunning. I hope publicizing this helps Kaiser get a clue. The problem is that Kaiser’s mindless support of managers, no matter what they do, creates an environment where important problems like this are suppressed.
asians are less likely to sue / make complains because of the culture in asia, and latinos who grew up in america are more likely to sue than asians. although that is sterotyping but it’s somewhat true
What is more than somewhat true is that this kind of discrimination is highly illegal.
We have never met one single person, patient or employee, who has been treated fairly in a dispute with Kaiser due to its policies of breaking the law to avoid being sued, and breaking the law to avoid losing when it is sued.
STEROTYPING IN KAISER IS COMMON,ASIANS ARE FIRED WITHOUT FAIR DUE PROCESS-FILIPINOS ARE PERCEIVED AS LAZY,THIEF AND LIARS.
Hello. I am an ex-KPIT employee, Hispanic, that has recently filed a lawsuit against Kaiser for discrimination. Would like more information about this policy to use in my case.
Regards,
Francisco Ramos
What you see is all the information we have. Perhaps your attorney could advertise for other victims? I’ll pass on any responses that come our way.
Kaiser in the Portland area is still up to these old tricks. Hired temp-to-hire with three whites in an area with no Latinos, they got rid of me (Latino) and hired the three white people. People in the area made it known to management and the union that they didn’t want any more “mexicans” around.
Nightmare in Kaiser West LA Respiratory Department. Kaiser management are narcissistic sociopaths.
We are former employees who worked at West LA Kaiser Permanente for several years before Ms. Gwendolyn Butler came on board to be Assistant of Department Administrator of the Respiratory Department. We got information that Ms. Gwendolyn Butler became an adjunct Clinical professor of Respiratory Therapy in Mt. San Antonio College and we have some concern about public safety and low morals that will be enforced by Ms. Butler to students of that college.
During the time when we worked under her supervision we were witnesses as good people and good professionals became a target for harassment, humiliation and discrimination by bully racist Ms. Butler. She is a pathological liar and incompetent respiratory therapist.
In 2007 about 20 Respiratory Therapists of the department filed a class action grievance against work shifts understaffing and to improve safety and quality of patient care. (Exhibit A)
Mr. Wayne Wallace, the department administrator (DA), was not happy about that and retaliated against class action participants by scrutinizing their work product and humiliating them in front of the department’s team. Even he had a lot of complains against him from subordinates, he was promoted to supervise several departments in the best traditions of Kaiser corrupted corporate environment and he hired Ms. Gwendolyn Butler to be his Assistant Department Administrator (ADA) for Respiratory Care. Since then the patient safety became worse than ever. The new Hospital building was built in addition to old one, but instead of adding more people on the shifts, amount of Respiratory Therapists decreased significantly. Often Respiratory Therapists had to service critical patients in ICU and ER at the same time. Walking distance between ICU and ER about 10-15 minutes and often when critical patient needed help, Respiratory Therapist was far away and safe patient care was compromised.
As soon as Ms. Butler became ADA a lot of employees started having all sorts of problems. People who worked there for a long time without any problems were force to resign or terminated. Some employees got lucky and transferred to other Kaiser locations. Then Ms. Butler came up with the solution to stop the employees transfer out of the West LA Kaiser and created a bad image about Kaiser Management. Her solution was to punish most of the employees with level 3 or 4 corrective actions, regardless of whether they deserved it or not, as the rule states that employee with level 3 or 4 corrective actions cannot leave their current Kaiser location for a period of 12 months. Most of the people who had these corrective actions became victims of even worse employment problems, humiliation and discrimination.
At this point it became evident to Respiratory Therapists in the department that Ms. Butler was hired to get rid of most of the old 40+ and/or foreign origin employees and to hire young new grads or America born people to satisfy her racist ambitions.
Somehow this information leaked to Ms. Butler, she denied this kind of accusation during one of the department meeting, but future proved that the accusations were valid.
We believe she had a list of employees (“victims”) who were supposed to be gone and she has done a great job to execute the illegal Kaiser policy or her own narcissistic preferences. Part of the list she discussed with former night shift lead Anthony Innabi and he gave a written statement about it to Raul Aguilar who was shift lead before his involuntary departure from Kaiser.
So during following years Ms. Butler was pushing out of the department a lot of good Respiratory Therapists, people over 40 year’s old, with religious beliefs different then Ms. Butler and/or foreign origin. Because of understaffed shifts people were working under a lot pressure and inclined to make mistakes, even doctors complained about understaffing. In 2009 Ms. Butler forced to transfer almost everyone to work 12 hours shift instead of 8, even though a lot of people did not agree to that and by the Union rules they could of stay on the shift they were hired for. It saved a lot of overtime wages for Kaiser, but as result employees were overworked and quality of work was affected which in turn affected patent safety. The management tried to hide understaffing issues from the government auditors. Every time Kaiser was due for auditing, nobody in department was canceled during the day shift, but as soon as auditors left, night shift had understaffing problems again.
In August 2011 about 15 people filed class action grievance against not safe patient care practices but it was buried in Union and Human Resources files and never dealt with. To protect them from the grievance the management hired per-diem new grad Jason Danchise with the main purpose – to time us out during our work days and to delay the grievance meeting and possibly get rid of “bad employees” who participated in the class action grievance. As far as we know that new grad was eventually promoted to full time position with no regards to other people seniority by the Union rules, as he was needed by management to continue harassing the rest of the employees. The budget has always been the main concern of Ms. Butler. She did not care about keeping experienced, qualified Respiratory Practitioners or patient care and safety. She was ready to do anything to stay in the budget in order to get a bigger bonus.
We don’t know all details, but believe Ms. Butler probably had some history of childhood abuse or other reasons that could contribute to her narcissistic behavior towards other people and especially their subordinates in the Respiratory Department. One time she told
about her mother “She needs to be happy that I keep her like a mother”. During the department meeting she said “I know that since I came here life for Respiratory Therapists became intolerable”. She exactly knew what she was doing was wrong but choose change nothing. Usually after department meeting and complains about hostile work environment she was trying to change her abusive behavior but it lasts not more than week.
For the last years we were trying to understand why it happened to people of the Respiratory Department and only logical reason that would make sense to us is a hate crime towards people with accent who was not born in the USA and other not justified reasons.
We attached partial list of people we could remember that left Respiratory Department between 2008-2012 year. We are sure some of them can testify about horrible hostile and dangerous for patient care environment created by Ms. Butler. Ms. Butler is narcissistic sociopath who jeopardizes patient’s life on the regular basis by understaffing shifts to get a bigger bonus for saving budget money. She humiliates and destroys Respiratory Therapists life that happened to be fall under her criteria of animosity.
There is no law to protect from narcissistic sociopath like Ms. Butler but we hope this information will be helpful to shed some light about her previous illegal activities.
We believe it is only matter of time and she will create similar problems in your college.
Sincerely,
Former and current employees of Kaiser Permanente.
It is sad to see that this was posted one year ago and still remains VERY TRUE! Sad to hear that Kaiser with all of its “deep pockets” is turning a blind eye to investigating such behavior. Many have come and many have gone but the environment remains the same. This woman is no joke and bad for business. Very very sad yet more than a hostile work environment but no one will complain in fear of losing their jobs/position within Kaiser.
Kaiser HR, please get your heads out of the sand and do something before it is too late. This is absolutely ridiculous! We should be focused on patients thriving and surviving but instead we are in extreme fear of management and constant “cover ups”.
Sincerely,
Current Employee