By Katia Hetter
July 27, 2001
Resting at her East Harlem apartment between radiation treatments, Maria Gonzalez cries when she remembers the man who once supervised her at her welfare-to-work job.
Gonzalez, 33, came to Manhattan from Puerto Rico in 1984 to join family and find work. By 1997, unemployed and facing eviction, she ended up on welfare.
The city Human Resources Administration, which oversees the welfare-to-work program, assigned her to one of its Manhattan offices to work as a clerk for her welfare benefits. As part of the 1996 federal welfare reform law, some 30,000 city welfare recipients are required to work for their benefits. If Gonzalez didn't work, her benefits could have been reduced or cut.
Instead of finding a professional work environment, Gonzalez said she was almost immediately subjected to harassment by her supervisor.
During the next two years, according to a lawsuit filed by the federal government, she said the man called her a lesbian for refusing to sleep with him, blew on her neck, grabbed her genitals, threw away her time cards, called her at home and threatened to kill her.
“I went there to work, not to have sex,” said Gonzalez, who left the city’s work experience program in 1999 because of the alleged harassment. She found a job at a clothing store near her home, but stopped working in April to begin almost daily treatment for cervical cancer.
Nearly four years after Gonzalez first complained, the supervisor at the center of the allegations, according to the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, continues to work in the welfare system, while the city’s attorneys maintain Gonzalez’s complaints - made as a member of the welfare program - do not come under the city's jurisdiction.
The federal lawsuit filed in May stems from the complaints of Gonzalez and three other women, who claim that they were sexually harassed while working for their welfare benefits at city agencies.
Each woman had filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
After ruling for the women in September 1999, the agency asked the city to negotiate a settlement.
Without confirming or denying the women's claims, the city refused to settle. City Corporation Counsel senior attorney Lorna Goodman said that welfare workers are not covered by civil-rights laws because they are not city employees. She suggested that the women could file criminal complaints or sue their alleged harassers.
Last week, however, Goodman said that while federal welfare reform excludes federal civil-rights protections, the city was researching if state and local laws apply to welfare workers. HRA declined to comment, referring calls to Goodman.
When the city refused to negotiate a settlement, Clinton appointee Mary Jo White, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, prepared a lawsuit to force the city to extend federal civil rights protections to welfare workers. United States Attorney General John Ashcroft, a Bush appointee, allowed her to file it.
Though no judge has ruled that welfare workers are covered by civil-rights laws, “there is a long history of case law allowing a broad definition of the words ‘employee’ and ‘employer’ under anti- discrimination law,” said Elizabeth Grossman, senior trial attorney with the EEOC’s New York office.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said last week that the four complaints had been investigated. He warned against turning four cases into a trend. Goodman declined to explain how the city had responded to the complaints other than to say, the city “will not tolerate sexual harassment of WEP workers.”
“Whatever we have done, we are going to save for our papers [to be filed in federal court], which will be made public,” she said.
Welfare Law Center attorney Marc Cohan said the city’s position “has been all over the map,” sometimes excluding workfare workers from all civil-rights protections, other times excluding them only from federal civil-rights law.
Although weak from five weeks of radiation treatment, Gonzalez gets furious about the mayor’s claim that a city agency responded to her allegations. Gonzalez, who worked 26 hours a week for $34.25, plus transportation, food stamps and rent, said her complaints have never been “thoroughly investigated.”
When she initially complained about the death threats and other harassment, she said her supervisor’s boss transferred her to another HRA office, but failed to investigate the claims. Her supervisor continued to harass her at her new location, she said, so she tried to file a complaint with HRA. She said HRA officials refused to take her complaint.
If city officials want to learn if other women have been harassed, Gonzalez said they could talk to other workfare women who worked for her former supervisor.
“He harassed every woman who worked for him, and [eventually] terminated them,” she said. “The city needs to train city workers how to treat WEPs, not to abuse them, as they've done for years.”
When Gonzalez left the WEP program, she said her former supervisor sent his friends to spy on her at her new workplace. When she recognized a former colleague watching her through the store’s windows, she said she filed a police report and the man left her alone.
Tuckner and other lawyers associated with the case expect the city’s policy to change when a new mayor takes office in January. Bronx Borough President and mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer has issued a press release condemning the city’s position.
Gonzalez said she has moved on with her life since filing her EEOC complaint against the city. Though she was diagnosed with cervical cancer April 5, she said her treatment is going well and her prognosis is good. She got married April 27.
Asked what she would like from the lawsuit, Gonzalez said she wants city officials to stop the sexual harassment of women on welfare.
“They should admit what happened to me and other women, and they should really, really investigate,” she said.