BCB: No Retaliation In Turndown for Promotion

A grievance claim by a Public Health Advisor in the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has been denied by the Board of Collective Bargaining, which decided that she had not been unfairly denied a promotion by her supervisors in retaliation for filing previous grievances.

Kecia Kemp, a Public Health Advisor Level II who has worked in the DHMH since 1997 and is a member of District Council 37 Local 768, was turned down for a promotion to Supervising Public Health Advisor after going through the interview process within her department in the summer of 2007.

Working Out of Title?

At the same time, she was in the middle of a grievance process against her supervisors in the Bureau of Sexually Transmitted Diseases Prevention, saying that she was already doing work at the Supervisor level, without the proper compensation or title. During her Step II hearing on this grievance, Ms. Kemp told the BCB that she had clashed with the Bureau Deputy Director, Steve Rubin, about the nature of her work.

"He was upset, because he was saying that my job detailed me being in the field, and that I more or less was lying about what I was actually doing," she said. "So I was explaining to him that is not all I do. I said I do most of the time pre- and post-HIV counseling, which it seemed as if he was not aware of... he was very abrupt and very nasty toward me."

Ms. Kemp's work is described as mostly working on disease intervention and counseling within her bureau, although she has also worked in other bureaus of the DHMH, such as the Bureau of Immunization and the Bureau of Asthma Initiative. She took courses to qualify to work in these bureaus, which was the crux of her first grievance against the DHMH.

Within a week of her Step II grievance hearing, Ms. Kemp was given an interview for a Supervising Public Health Adviser position in an STD Testing and Education Program for Urban Populations program. One of the interviewers, Sophie Nurani, said that "she looked like a good candidate... her resume spoke to her experience with the bureau."

Questioned Judgment, Interest

But her interview, which Ms. Kemp said "went very well," impressed neither Ms. Nurani nor the other interviewer, Meghan Rogers. According to both, Ms. Kemp answered and talked on her cell phone during the interview, a call which Ms. Kemp said was work-related. Ms. Rogers said that it was "inappropriate" and showed Kemp was "not taking the interview seriously...[and] lacked the interpersonal and verbal skills required to succeed at the position." Ms. Nurani said she did not "perceive [Kemp] to be particularly excited about working in schools or with youth...I just didn't get a sense of enthusiasm. I felt like she wanted an opportunity to move ahead in the bureau, but not specifically in this program."

Eventually, two candidates were offered the job, both bilingual Spanishspeakers— a listed qualification which Ms. Kemp did not possess—and one of them accepted it.

Ms. Kemp alleged that Ms. Nurani probably knew about her out-of-title grievances because "Steve Rubin [was] over her," but Ms. Nurani said she was unaware until after interviewing her.

Ms. Kemp also said that Vernon Pressley, a Regional Consultant at the Bureau, told her that she had been "blackballed" and said that if she wanted a promotion she should look outside the agency.

Although Ms. Nurani and Ms. Rogers made the initial recommendations as to who got hired, these were then passed up to Samuel Sebiyam, Program Management Officer for the Bureau, who was directly under Mr. Rubin. Ms. Sebiyam told the BCB that he followed the recommendations of Ms. Rogers and Ms. Nurani, saying he was aware of Ms. Kemp's grievances but did not consider them in his recommendations to Mr. Rubin.

Although the decision did note the extreme closeness of the dates between Ms. Kemp's Step II grievance hearing and her interview, the BCB decided that "the city has demonstrated that it had legitimate business reasons for denying Petitioner a promotion," particularly in that Ms. Kemp did not speak a second language and that "both interviewers underscored Petitioner's behavior during the interview, particularly her decision to answer her cellular phone."