Union Blames Job Conditions for Employment Worker’s Death

LONG BEACH —  The death of a state employee who had to be rushed to a hospital after a 90-minute meeting with his supervisors has renewed charges by an employee union that working conditions in many of the state Employment Development Department offices are intolerable.

Edward Choice, 37, an employment program technician, died Tuesday after paramedics took him from the Long Beach EDD office to a nearby hospital Monday.

Choice’s sister, Marcelle Talbert of Los Angeles, said doctors who treated him told her he had suffered a stroke early Monday that could have been brought on by stress. She said he suffered a heart attack Tuesday.

“They harassed him to death,” she said of his employers. “I don’t think he was able to take it. The last thing he said to me was I should bring it to the attention of whoever I could.”

Choice’s death comes 10 months after the manager of the EDD office in Garden Grove was shot to death in front of a dozen stunned witnesses by a disgruntled employee who then committed suicide by turning the gun on himself.

Family Files Suit

The family of the Garden Grove employee, Fidel Gonzalez Jr., filed a $7-million wrongful death suit Wednesday charging that government officials could have prevented Gonzalez’s death. The family of Gonzalez’s boss, Louis Zuniga Jr., filed a wrongful death suit Jan. 14 against the state and City of Garden Grove.

Gonzalez’s suit alleges that intolerable working conditions created by the state Employment Development Department caused Zuniga to use “oppressive management tactics” that drove Gonzalez to kill his boss and himself.

“This is not an isolated incident,” Bill Hansel, labor relations representative for the California State Employees Assn., said of Choice’s death. “It is related to working conditions. We think (the death) was directly related to the treatment he was given.”

Valerie Reynoso, a spokeswoman for the department, said the incident is being investigated. But she denied widespread mistreatment of employees in the statewide department’s 134 offices. She called the union’s claim “grossly irresponsible” and “disheartening.”

“We are shocked at the negative and accusatory tone of the allegations,” Reynoso said. “We find it appalling that the (union) would make a judgment call like that.”

Fellow workers say Choice,who had been employed by the department since 1980, had been showing signs of ill health for several weeks. Several months ago, they said, he had suffered a stroke and before that had been involved in a dispute with management over a two-week absence. Eventually, according to Hansel, the matter was decided by an arbitrator in Choice’s favor.

According to the union, Choice was berated Jan. 23 by office manager Gary Quiggle for making an error in the documentation of an unemployment claim. On Monday, employees say, the situation continued as Choice was confronted by Quiggle and two other supervisors during a 90-minute meeting that was ultimately cut short because of Choice’s worsening condition.

“He was already ill, and that should have been pretty evident to anyone who looked,” said Frances Westerfield, the shop steward who sat in on the last 20 minutes of the session. “When Eddie reported to work that day, he could barely get in the door. They (management) had a responsibility to do something and they didn’t do it.”

Realizing that the man was too weak to continue working, fellow employees summoned paramedics who took Choice to St. Mary Medical Center, where he died the next day.

Quiggle, contacted Thursday by phone, would not comment on the incident and referred all inquiries to Reynoso. Doctors who treated Choice also declined to comment.

But Hansel says the death is symptomatic of the kind of treatment systematically afforded Employment Development Department employees statewide, especially those who have been involved in previous disagreements with the state. “We’ve been trying to get the department to change its ways,” he said. “We don’t want to lose any more employees this way.”

The union plans to honor Choice with a silent vigil at noon Monday in the parking lot of the building in which he worked at 1313 N. Pine Ave.