DLSE personnel changes, some good, some bad

When Lauro Cons retired, it was a great day for the California public. His public service career consisted of sucking up to Susan Nakagama and Greg Rupp. When Greg Rupp retired, he knew that he was so hated by DLSE staff that he went out with a whimpering cry & demanded that there be no retirement dinner for him. With these retirements, gaps were created. Victor Jurado became a DLC IV for BOFE: who would have thunk it? Nance Steffen tried to break it off in his ass when she banished him to NorCal for several years, even though she knew that Victor had to care for his mother down in So Cal.

Once Victor begged for mercy was he allowed to return to So Cal, and now that Nance Steffen was pushed out of the way (sent to Public Works after her cheerleading for that CMS abortion), Victor actually got promoted! Rumor has it that when he was in Long Beach, the first hour of Victor's working day was spent with the Los Angeles Times in the men's bathroom stall. It's not that he wasn't there, you just had to know where to find him, but I digress.

So DLSE pushed Nance Steffen into Public Works, and they pushed Susan Nakagama into Public Works after she retaliated against an employee who filed a workers comp. claim, but you'll see no real evidence of that because DLSE doesn't believe in transparency, just innuendo and "no correlation." With Lauro Cons retiring, some other idiot had to replace him, and who was the perfect idiot bureaucrat? Diana Chen! While she was a supervisor at BOFE, she had a record number of subordinates requesting transfers, so things weren't working out at BOFE.

Henry Huerta was producing the stats needed for his group and Tongkun Kim was producing the stats for his group: why break what isn't broken? Diana Chen had to go, because Susan knows nothing about field audits, field enforcement, and she is deathly afraid of public speaking, so someone gotta dig the ditch, and it's Diana Chen. The bonus is that in a republican-controlled administration, there are about ZERO public debarrments, so it's not like these 3 stooges are doing anything except collecting a paycheck. A great start to the new year with Diana Chen & Susan Nakagama paired up as the moron twins. Thanks for making California a better place by staying out of the way!

Gus Alfaro might take DLC 2 position in Los Angeles, Supervisor Diana Chen might have violated employee's right to privacy

1) Gus Alfaro is a hearing officer (Deputy Labor Commissioner 2) for DLSE. Ever since the DLSE had their hearing officer training, Gus has been making major moves on Deputy Chief Lupe Almaraz to acquire a hearing officer position in Los Angeles. An anonymous source tells me that he's gone so far as to write Lupe Almaraz some bleeding heart letter so as to convince Lupe to give him the title. With Gus throwing his application into the Los Angeles hearing officer pool, this might tilt the axis of Gus Alfaro receiving the hearing officer position in Los Angeles. If this is true, then Lupe Almaraz should have never entertained such discussions with Gus, as that tainted the promotion process.

2) Diana Chen caught a couple of DLSE staff doing some hanky panky! Who does she go to for advice? Word on the street is that she went to DLSE peace officer Bill Egan! Now, in the world of supervisors, describing the hanky panky incident to someone like Bill Egan violates the employees' right to privacy, not that the DLSE cares about violating privacy.

Labor Standards has no labor standards. Lupe Almaraz will let anyone schmooze him for a promotion/transfer, and Diana Chen has no idea how to handle a minor personnel action, and violates privacy rights by talking about it.

DLSE's 3-card monte with taxpayer-paid state vehicles: who cares because the taxpayer's paying the bill & DLSE doesn't change until a court orders it

The Los Angeles office of the DLSE cannot do their job because they are too busy crying about which car is assigned to them. Asst. Chief Greg Rupp dislikes his new "E" plate car, so he gives that one to gal pal Abigael Calva: Rupp acquires new car with undercover plates. The DLSE never stops bending over the taxpayer and giving them the shank. Those two nitwits rarely slither out of their caves, so to justify giving them cars is very weak. To give them new cars is just them laughing at what they can do to the taxpayer. Asst. Chief Rupp doesn't need a car with undercover license plates; who does he think he is, Frank Cannon? The biggest difference being that Frank Cannon actually did work and closed cases, but I digress.

So we have Regional Manager Abby Calva all pimped out in her brand-new Impala, but the real mystery is where her old car went. Did it go back to the state's Dept. of General Services? Nope. Abby's old gold Stratus went to her gal pal supervisor Diana Chen. What that means is that we now have a state vehicle issued to Wage Claims and going to the Bureau of Field Enforcement. What did Diana Chen do with that car? She gave it to subordinate Andy Kim, because he's been crying about not getting a new car for a long time; besides, she didn't like the color! Diana Chen has this subordinate, Ricardo Mejia, who drove around in a semi-new lavender car. She likes the color of that car, so she just takes it. She then takes the state vehicle issued to Carlos Lopez and gives it to Mr. Mejia. Mr. Lopez no longer needs a car, as he is leaving the DLSE to work for California's Dept. of Health Services.

Asst. Chief Greg Rupp's new state vehicle sits at his house while he recovers from knee problems...funny how management has no problem brow-beating the rank & file employees into submitting their state vehicles for general use should any of these rank & file types be away from their duties for more than a week! Nice double standard there; let's see Angela fix that. Based on the action & inaction I've seen in the first 30 days, I don't think new Labor Commissioner Angela Bradstreet will do much at her new job. What I don't understand is why she left a big law firm (pro-employer/anti-employee litigation) to take a cut in pay to work at DLSE. If she's going to use this job as a resume builder for political greener pastures, then one might assume that she'll need to do well here.

Currently, she's having Abigael Calva and Lupe Almaraz figure out how to solve her Corrales problem. Angela can start by not thinking that the problem makers are really problem solvers in disguise...they're (still) problem makers. Angela should have them solve the taxpayer-paid state vehicle ethics problem before giving them a California Supreme Court problem like Corrales deadlines to solve.