justiceSleeps_07

You Decide

Communiques (submitted to ARS administrators)
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Horticulturist/Curator position (2008)
- candidates for the job (both are women scientists)
- Letter of Conscience and Concern (This was my attempt to advise the agency)
- reply from Dr. Molly Kretsch (She was unwilling to warn the new curator)
- my emails to the new curator (after she experienced a negative incident)
- new curator quits 22 May 2010 (rather than filing an EEO complaint)

You Decide:
Do you believe that Dr. Molly Kretsch (ARS Acting Associate Area Director) acted ethically when she failed to address the matter of unlawful harassment, discrimination, and retaliation being perpetrated against ARS’s women scientists in Alaska before allowing another woman scientist to be hired into the same situation?
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CARE Team visits Fairbanks’ ARS unit (2008)
- Consolidated Assistance, Review, and Evaluation (CARE) (ARS’s quality management team)
- schedule (for the CARE Team’s visit to Fairbanks, Alaska)
- email string (concerning confidentiality of the CARE Team’s questionnaires)
- email (noting that all information from employees would be reviewed, then destroyed)
- questions prepared by the CARE Team (to be answered by each ARS employee in Alaska)
- my written responses to the CARE Team’s questions
- CARE Team evaluation form

According to the 2006 ARS "CARE Program Guide" (in place during the Fairbanks' CARE Review), the CARE Team's job included verifying that current USDA/ARS statements and posters for EEO/CR are prominently displayed; however, the team is cautioned to avoid EEO issues, and to advise employees who mention EEO incidents in the unit "that dealing with these issues is not a function of CARE and that if they proceed, the matter will have to be brought to the attention of upper level management".

You Decide:
Does that sound like a threat to you?! What do you think they meant by having to bring the matter “to the attention of upper level management”? (Why else would the employees be bringing it to the CARE Team’s attention?)

Does it seem reasonable to send the CARE Team to an ARS unit to check whether EEO signs are up, but not allow the team to report the EEO abuses being perpetrated against the unit's women research scientists, (... abuses that were occurring despite the properly-posted signs)?

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Invoking the USDA

You Decide:
Do you think that ARS administrative personnel (Drs. Knipling, McLellan, Hammond, Matteri, and Whalen), would have ever curtailed the power of Dr. Pantoja, (a man with grievances and EEOC discrimination complaints against him from every ARS woman research scientist he ever supervised) if USDA Civil Rights administrators (Joe Leonard and Mary McNeil) had not intervened?

Do you think Dr. Pantoja should have been allowed to participate (nation-wide) as a panel member on ARS women scientist’s RPES (promotion) panels during the four years that complaints were being filed against him by the women scientists in his own unit?
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