June 16, 1993: "At 4:10 p.m. I looked up and observed Tence at her window and on the phone. Twenty minutes later I looked up again and saw that she was on the phone. I approached her and advised her that she was on the phone for twenty minutes. She informed me that from 4:00 to 4:15 she was on her break and then she went to work. When I approached Tence, she was on the phone with her window closed conducting union business. I advised her that she could not take her break at her work station with her window closed and on the phone."
August 23, 1993: "Advised Tence that she could not wear knee highs if they were going to roll down and give the appearance that she was wearing socks -- Joe [McKinney] brought it to my attention a few days ago and Leo [Arnaiz] did the same today."
August 26, 1993: "I observed Tence during her lunch time typing at Sandy's desk. I observed her doing this from 2:30 to 3:00 p.m. once again during her lunch hour." (The words lunch hour were underlined twice for emphasis.)
August 31, 1993: "Tence went to lunch at 2:05 and was back by 3:00. She was ten minutes late from lunch. Yesterday 8-30-93 she was late five minutes from lunch, too."
September 1, 1993: "Tence went on her morning break at 11:10 and came back at 11:32. That means she took a 22-minute break instead of fifteen like she is supposed to."
September 23, 1993: "Tence called in at approximately 11:30 a.m., advised me would be unable to come in due to her illness -- questioned Tence regarding what was the problem. She responded, 'I cannot validate your question.' Would be in tomorrow with a doctor's note."
September 24, 1993: "I [Yolanda Lobeck] observed Tence sitting at her desk with her window opened talking on the phone from 12:00 to 12:10. She had the Yellow Pages of the phone book opened on top of her desk and I overheard a conversation related to getting a check to get her medicine, so it was a personal phone call."
September 27, 1993: "Tence closed her window at 2:05 p.m. At 2:07 I went to her desk and advised her she was not supposed to take her break at her work station. She replied, 'Yolanda, please do not harass me, I am filing charges against you.'" (One employee, Annabell Winnan, said during the hearing presided over by Joey Rix that supervisor Lobeck would sit and stare at Wolfe for extended periods of time. "I had never seen her watching anyone else this way," Winnan testified.)
January 3, 1994: "I observed Tence making a note on a small green index card."
January 7, 1994: "I observed Tence at the copier making notes on a white piece of paper. As soon as she reached her desk she walked over to my desk and handed me the piece of paper. Note: Tence was at the copier making copies -- work related. The memo that she handed me was not! Memo was written during working hours and immediately after a discussion with Yolanda." (Wolfe says the piece of paper she handed Pavon was a note telling her that she felt she was being harassed and that by scrutinizing her every move, Pavon and the other supervisors were exacerbating her medical condition.)
If you accept the notion that the Red Books support Wolfe's claim that she was being treated in a manner different from other employees, the second part of her burden at the hearing would have been to show why. Was it because of her union activities, as she alleges, or for some other reason? Hearing officer Rix acknowledged this may have been the most difficult issue to prove. "I don't know if a lot of these activities are because of personality problems or because of her union activities," he admitted at one point.
Certainly Wolfe's erratic and emotional behavior during the hearing did not help her case. "I am not a competent attorney," Wolfe concedes. "But I was a competent court clerk and they took that away from me. This is not the way I usually am," she says, her eyes welling with tears again. "They made me this way. I used to be articulate. I used to be able to think clearly. Now all I do is cry."
While circumstantial in nature, the most damning evidence that the county was retaliating against Wolfe because of her union activity can be found in its own files. Between 1992 and 1993, Wolfe's employee evaluations took a dramatic turn for the worse -- suspiciously coinciding with her becoming a union steward. "I did not change," Wolfe argues. "My role changed."
Add to that the intensified scrutiny that began after she became a steward, and the fact that 61 co-workers signed their names to a petition asserting that her work on behalf of Local 1363 resulted in the harassment, and a strong case could be made. "A lot of people were hoping that she would win," says one colleague. "I'll tell you this, I know a lot of people didn't speak up during the hearing because they felt intimidated with Leo [Arnaiz] in there. We were told not to let that bother us, to speak the truth, but we all still had to work for Leo when this was over."
