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Letter to Governor Davis About
Maria Robbins What Now?! Governor Gray Davis Dear Governor Davis, This letter is also about the Division of Labor Statistics and Research (DLSR) of the Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) and together with the letter addressing some of the misdeeds of the Chief of DLSR, David Aroner, is part of our follow up on our previous letters to you regarding the unacceptable situation prevailing at DLSR. As we noted in earlier letters, the person actually running DLSR is the Deputy Chief of that Division, Maria Robbins. A byproduct of corruption, she was elevated to position of authority in DLSR, during the Deukmejian administration, by a former Director of DIR, who was a friend of her husband. Maria Robbins lacks the education, knowledge, and ability to do anything that would approximate economic research; let alone to run the statistical agency of the fifth largest economy in the world. Since the mid-eighties, when she took control of DLSR, the Division has, in effect, ceased to do any research. During this time, in one or two instances, when the Division attempted to involve itself with research, the results were embarrassing and tragicomic. In the mid-nineties, DLSR, as the statistical agency of the State, was ordered by the then Administration to perform a cost-benefit analysis of the impact to the State economy of the prevailing wage program under two different methods of determining the prevailing wage.1 The study, under the guidance of Maria Robbins, turned out to be an embarrassment for DLSR. There were numerous errors -- methodological and technical – and the resulting figures were even more erroneous and outlandish. A review of that study by professor Michael Reich uncovered and exposed all these errors.2 Attachment A, below, shows an excerpt form an e-mail sent by the Chief counsel of DIR, John Rea, to two of DLSR staff and a DIR attorney in which he expresses his exasperation for the inability of Maria Robbins to understand even simple concepts. Writes Mr. Rea: We had a meeting today on where the rulemaking was. Aubry [the Director of DIR at the time] asked “how are we handling the arithmetic mistake.” Much ensued. Of immediate interest to you is that Maria will come looking for the Means wage survey data. I am not sure that she “got” the idea of how to use it and, as today’s discussion got more and more frustrating, I am not sure that my powers of clarity improved, either. So, in lieu of trying again to explain to her, I thought I would put my thoughts down. In the event that she discusses the use of the data with you, well, you will be ahead of the game. Mr. Rea confesses above his utter frustration at the inability of Maria Robbins to understand the wage survey data appearing in “Means” (RSMeans”), a well-known publication dealing with construction industry cost statistics. We think that this e-mail speaks for itself and no further comment is necessary. The question, of course, is how a person, such as Maria Robbins, lacking so dramatically in knowledge and ability has been able to not only climb to the top of the State statistical agency, but has also managed to hold on to that position for all these years. The answer, as has already been pointed out in our previous letters to you, lays in the fact that appointments in DIR and DLSR have, for the most part, been made on purely political criteria with total disregard for the appointees’ ability and knowledge required to do the job. With some rare exceptions, these appointees lack the qualifications -- and many times the interest -- to perform the job they were assigned to do. As a result, they depend wholly on lower management for advice and guidance. Quite often, this dependency takes the form of the “tail waging the dog”. Instead of the appointees managing the Department and the Division, they end up being managed. To be sure, this managing by lower-middle management, such as the Deputy Chief of DLSR, Maria Robbins, is heavily dressed with flattery and the professed interest and “devotion” of that lower-middle management to appointees. Having secured, through these tactics, the support, or at least the acquiescence, of the appointees, lower-middle management then turns its attention toward the employees. Employees who are perceived as “threatening” to management are being dealt with appropriately. For example, the “threatening” employees in DLSR are harassed in a number of ways with the intent of forcing them to quit. Assignment to menial tasks, denial of promotions, and constant badgering are some of the tools used by DLSR management for that end. Maria Robbins is the prime and most extreme example of middle management having emasculated a division in order to secure their hold on to their positions. Maria Robbins has caused, one way or another, the flight of all capable persons from DLSR, while at the same time she has retained and advanced to positions of authority in that division persons who, like her, lack the ability and knowledge even to be employed by a statistical agency. That way, she has managed to secure an obedient, “non-threatening” (to her) staff which is willing to cater to her in all possible ways out of fear of losing their jobs. According to all accounts, a particularly odious manifestation of that type of behavior encouraged in DLSR by Maria Robbins is the case of Zagros Madjd-Sadjadi, a sycophant whose slavering and obsequious behavior has been so extreme, even with DLSR standards, that it has raised the ire of most DLSR employees. The DLSR employees have been accustomed to the sight of Zagros Madjd-Sadjadi running constantly after Maria Robbins whenever he catches a sight of her, be it when she is on her way to the elevator, taking a break, or even on her way to the lady’s room. He also doesn’t miss an opportunity to go into her office and it appears that he volunteers to her information about almost every employee in DLSR. As a reward for his servile behavior, Maria Robbins has promoted this individual from an entry-level position to Research Manager II within a record two-year time, even though he did not qualify for the position. We have already noted Maria Robbins’ attempt at covering up the Chief of DLSR’s (David Aroner’s) harassment and improper activity toward a young female student assistant. We have also described the pathetic situation in DLSR, in which the statistical agency of the fifth largest economy in the world is incapable of performing even the most rudimentary functions entrusted to it by the Legislature, due to the total corruption that has allowed the highjacking of the Division by monumentally incompetent and ignorant individuals. Attachment B shows a widely-distributed within DLSR, and written by a new employee of that Division, satirical paper which illustrates the shameful situation in DLSR. Given the waste of taxpayers’ money for the sake of personally benefiting the incompetent leadership of DLSR and the fact that the situation cannot be corrected internally, isn’t it time that you personally intervene to remedy the situation as we have already suggested to you? Sincerely, Yaya Fanusie, Ph.D. Publisher of What Now?! 1 The two methods pertained to the different treatment of the construction crafts’ survey results performed by DLSR. However, because of the inability of DLSR to conduct surveys correctly, these were abandoned. Nowadays, the prevailing wages issued by DLSR are copied directly from the various construction collective bargaining agreements. 2 “Prevailing Wage Laws and the California Economy”, Michael Reich, University of California, Berkeley (February 1996). |