Union representatives for Los Angeles animal shelter workers plan to give the City Council a petition today demanding the dismissal of general manager Ed Boks and assistant general manager Linda Barth.
The vote of no confidence, as the petition is called, was signed by more than half of L.A. Animal Services employees and presented to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's office in March. Boks answers directly to the mayor.
The petition was signed by several groups of employees who make up the majority of shelter manpower: 30 of 32 animal care supervisors, represented by Laborers' International Union of North America Local 777, and 105 of 216 animal control officers and animal care technicians represented by Service Employees International Union Local 721. The unions do not represent shelter clerical workers or registered veterinary technicians, though some of those workers provided additional signatures.
But after several meetings with the mayor's staff, union officials and shelter workers who helped organize the petition effort said they were dissatisfied with the response. So they decided to take their cause to council members even though they have no direct power over Boks.
"Employees are fed up," said Keith Kramer, manager of the West Valley animal shelter and executive board member of the laborers' union's Los Angeles chapter. "We've given the mayor's office every opportunity to do something and they haven't. We're hoping the City Council can convince the mayor's office to act."
Running the city's system of six shelters has never been an easy task. Boks' predecessors had their share of run-ins with critics. In his three years in Los Angeles, Boks has frequently bumped heads with activists, some Los Angeles Board of Animal Services commissioners, and some City Council members. Now he's facing employees who say he has sacrificed the health and safety of shelter animals and workers to promote the system as one that is lowering its kill rate.
Achieving a so-called no-kill policy for healthy animals is the Holy Grail of municipal shelters. But according to employees and their union representatives, as euthanasia rates went down over the last few years -- a trend that halted this spring -- shelter conditions dangerously worsened. In a lengthy brief to City Council members laying out the staffers' complaints and accompanying the petition, they say that "the department is simply holding more animals for longer periods of time. These policies have also increased the stress on impounded animals -- longer impound periods lead to overcrowding, fighting, illness and injuries; all of which increase the risk of illness and injuries to department personnel."
