About this effort

In Spring 2005, I slipped an anonymous letter underneath the door of the Police Department Commander who headed San Francisco's Department of Parking and Traffic (DPT).  The letter asked that the Commander reassign the parking control supervisor who oversaw DPT's enforcement division dispatch center.  I had no idea that my cautious, hopeful action on behalf of my fellow employees at DPT's main enforcement facility would lead to so much drama.  In the next twelve months I experienced retaliation, the removal of another DPT employee and myself from our work facility, a lack of promised union support and knowledge about similar civil service corruption throughout San Francisco government.  It is an education I never expected to earn.  It is an education from which I cannot turn away.


I had the good fortune to leave DPT in February 2007 and transfer to San Francisco 311. I have served as a Customer Service Agent at the call center since then.  The difference in management styles between 311, which is overseen by the City Administrator's office, and SFMTA/DPT could not be more stark.  Where San Francisco 311 is run on a modern, high tech business model, SFMTA/DPT is a relic from the bygone days of San Francisco government's corrupted past.  I wish that was the case, anyway.  For SFMTA/DPT remains a modern-day template of government administration gone bad.


Why have I decided at this time to go public with a reform effort which, at DPT anyway, has led to other employees being harassed and fired?  Why go public with a hidden history of civil service misconduct that has led to emotional breakdowns and physical assaults?  I am as staunch a "Union Man" as any.  (My father, a union activist, was threatened with jail by small-town cops if he didn't leave his union's picket line--my first lesson in how unequal social power dynamics play themselves out.)  The answer to the above questions is that I cannot abide injustice in the workplace and society whether or not it is perpetrated by those at the top or those within "the rank and file."


Human society is full of too many bullies.  The DPT employees I joined five years ago--supervisors, parking control officers, fellow dispatchers--shared this sensibility.  One of them--Vidalina "Bebe" Pubill--has now been fired by SFMTA in retaliation for her effort to help remove a rogue DPT supervisor from his position.


There are bullies backing bullies within San Francisco government.  Their time of unchecked influence within San Francisco government must now come to an end!