LOS ANGELES (CNS) – A senior management analyst and six other current and former Manhattan Beach employees are suing the city, claiming a hostile work environment in which city officials and upper managers allegedly subject people of color to discrimination and retaliation.
The lead plaintiff in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit is Erika King, a Latina. She and her fellow plaintiffs further contend that the public works and human resources directors as well as the city engineer punish those who report alleged government corruption or mismanagement.
“The city fostered a culture in which sexual harassment and retaliation for taking parental leave were not only tolerated, but normalized,” the suit states. “This allowed city officials … to engage in blatant government corruption, reckless mismanagement of city funds, and staggering incompetence, without consequence or oversight, even when their failures drained taxpayer dollars and flagrantly violated state and federal laws.”
A representative for the South Bay city did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the suit brought Wednesday.
King writes and manages contracts and budgets, administers grants and conducts financial and policy analyses. She says the city engineer and public works director limit resources for women, people of color and older employees — King is over 40 — and set impossible project deadlines to set certain people up to fail.
When King protested the alleged disparate treatment, the public works director allegedly told her to “be a good soldier” and to “stay in your lane” while also dubbing her a “mama bear,” the suit states.
“Most alarmingly, (the public works director) pressured Ms. King to sign financial documents for the West Basin Water Association Board, a high- stakes responsibility explicitly reserved for the director or utilities manager,” the suit further alleges.
The public works director also “systematically diverted massive city resources to create a false narrative of competence for his favored employees” and in the past two years he channeled more than $700,000 to outside consultants to perform engineering work that the city engineer should have done, the suit further alleges.
When King reported some of her concerns to human resources and the city attorney, she received a “dismissive” response and a city investigator asked her, “Do you think he’s breaking the rules or just circumventing the rules to make business processes faster?” the suit further states.
In retaliation for speaking out, the public works director “orchestrated a punitive campaign against her,” transferring her to a different division, stripping her of crucial projects and removing her essential support staff, according to the suit.
The six other plaintiffs are Xiangrong Shi, Tikneshea Hicks, Ernest Area, Mike Grafton, Bobby Dobson and Joel Arellano.
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