By Dalia Diaz
By now many of the people who pay attention to the occurrences of City Hall and its elected officials, know that last week Mayor Rivera sent out a message through the press of who his choice is for the vacant City Attorney position. He also specified that he would be giving the position of a future vacant Executive Director of the Workforce Investment Board to his current Economic and Business Development Director Abelito Vargas.
This, for all purposes, is his way to undermine the talents that the City of Lawrence has and instead he places those that have very minimal qualifications in very important city positions. I have written extensively about them and their lack of qualifications.
It has been written by author Janine N. Truitt that there are five ways to undermine the hiring process of any employer looking to fill vacant positions. I am going to modify those five methods that she wrote about and mention how it applies to this current mayor. After all, Rivera is the one to has stated that the prior mayor was corrupt in hiring and that he didn’t hire qualified people for jobs – so let’s apply the same standards.
Step 1 – Bogus Job Postings
This is an ongoing occurrence with the current mayor (and the Lawrence Public Schools, as well). They post positions of highly sought-after jobs with a particular set of skills and salary, and then quietly choose the candidate. In the meantime, employees who seek promotions and applicants waste their time with applications and paperwork – even interviews – as they wish to get a job they have no possibility of attaining. Ask recent graduate Nazario Esquea in the Tax Department. The mayor has said that he will never allow him to be promoted.
Instead is goes to someone in his campaign or a friend or family members of his supporters whether they qualified or not. In the Lawrence Public Schools, they post jobs with a low salary in order to get a low turnout and candidates with low skills. After the posting closes, they offer the position to a “friend” and then give him or her a higher salary. For instance, the LPS posted a position for $50,000 and after offering the position to a “friend” changed the salary to $70,000 without a new posting. Talk about discrimination, favoritism, cronyism, and corruption!
Step 2 – Sneak Attack Promotions
“When you feel the need to confidentially promote employees followed by a celebrity-worthy press release announcing your decision, morale is going to plummet.” This is exactly what happened last week when Mayor Rivera sent a message to the council for his choice of a very low skilled person to become the City Attorney. This action bypasses an employee that has been working there longer, is more qualified and is bilingual.
It’s also the message he sent to everyone who would be interested to apply for the Executive Director position at the Workforce Investment Board, although it has not been advertised. The message was not to bother in applying because “I am giving this position to Abelito Vargas.” Wow, just wow!
First, let’s just say that Abelito has no experience in workforce applicability. He knows a little bit of economics because he has learned a thing or two while in his current position (which by the way was a gift from Mayor Rivera since he was just a real estate/insurance salesman). But Abelito knows absolutely nothing about oversight and policy-making for federally funded employment and training services. He has no skills or experience in addressing critical labor market issues. Every human resource professional in the Merrimack Valley has more experience and skills than Abelito for this position. The mayor loves to hire below the job specification because he wants to feel that his employees are beneath him.
Step 3 – Blacklisted for Promotion
The mayor undermines employees who are working smart and hard just to keep them in the position he wants and needs them in. Do a great job and you will have no opportunity to transfer or get promoted because “they need you there” or “you do great work”. Mess-up, get arrested for a despicable act in a hotel like Theodoro Rosario and you will get promoted or transferred, immediately in some cases. Lie on your application like Wendy Luzón and you get a job and protection from the mayor. Lying on an application for employment is reason for immediate dismissal. Having denied under oath that he didn’t know that Luzón lied in her resume to the city, the mayor later admitted to the local paper that he also lied but he will correct that by simply writing a letter. Additionally, he does everything in his power to keep the employee from progressing further by sharing off-the-record performance details that influences the selection process.
Step 4 – Frienenemies
Yes, I know it’s a made up word by our current generation. But I am going to use this one for this purpose. It has several meanings, but I am going to use it in this context “People that have no conscience and underestimate the consequences of their actions because they underestimate the character of their victim.” We’ve seen this time and time again by this mayor: The number of resources (legal) and money (taxpayer money) to defend and spend on bogus employment discharges that become vacancies for his friends.
We, the taxpayers, are the ones that will get to pay for years to come, if not decades. The mayor still has three years of firing and hiring mishaps that will end up in more lawsuits. The figure to the law firm friends of the mayor is in the millions now. Think about it, the mayor may be gone and we will still be paying for his stupidities. But his lawyer friends will be very rich.
Step 5 – Hitting the Floor Running
The mayor, as well as the directors of city departments, doesn’t have time to train and build up their employees. Instead, they fire people and hire people they believe will hit the floor running. They truly believe that some new employee can come into the city workforce and do better than the employees in place. It’s crazy to think the city mayor or Abelito for that matter know about employment (except hiring their friends and families) because as Janet Truitt writes, “so how does more knowledge, skills and abilities help when you haven’t established what is absolutely essential to your operations. If they aren’t trained to the standard of the current workforce, blame yourself for not investing in them and insisting that they continue to grow professionally.”
The intentions and the practice say a different message for Mayor Rivera. Hiding opportunities from its workers, to give to friends and campaign members, does not allow internal opportunities aligned with employees’ background and interests.
One more thing that the author Truitt states, and applies bigtime to Mayor Rivera, “Lastly, no more bogus searches. External and internal candidates alike know when you are full of sh%&! Stop putting out external postings knowing you want a qualified internal candidate and stop posting internal positions knowing there’s a VIP in mind!”
Mayor Rivera needs to stop weakening the authority of the city’s government and cease undermining every process (including the procurement process). Selecting your friends and families for jobs and handing out contracts to friends is only placing the city in danger of being sued again and again. I have been informed that he insisted in hiring a worker at DPW who was recently released from jail and appeared in the newspapers for dealing a double life selling heroin. The mayor says he believes in second chances. I can almost guarantee that every selection of new hires has been tainted. The interference, by the mayor (and even directors in some cases), speaks to the level of corruption of this administration.
The mayor says he believes in second chances. Let’s analyze how many second chances has the mayor given to actual employees of the city, Justo Garcia, Rafael Gadea and George Arvanitis all won their jobs back, but the mayor refuses to allow them to return. He allowed Melix Bonilla back but refused to re-instate him to his original job.
M.G.L. c. 151B, s.4 guarantees that no person shall suffer discrimination in the terms, conditions or privileges of his or her employment because of his or her protected class status unless based upon a bona fide occupational qualification. With that, Mayor Rivera has already done so. By already stating whom he chooses (or wishes the council to choose), he has discriminated against veterans, disabled people, and other protected statuses.
I guess Mayor Rivera has not heard of the “motivating factor” under 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(m) which states, “Impermissible consideration of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment practices Except as otherwise provided in this subchapter, an unlawful employment practice is established when the complaining party demonstrates that race, color, religion, sex, or national origin was a motivating factor for any employment practice, even though other factors also motivated the practice.”
