NEWS AND COMMENT-LOS ANGELES, USA: This story is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, the Los Angeles Times reports that a senior Animal Services staffer whose job it is to oversee the city’s dog walking program said that he was frightened of large dogs but not of small dogs because he can hit them. We don’t have the exact words he said verbatim but they were relayed to others via a whistleblower whose name is Claudio Kusnier.
Kusnier volunteered to work at the West Valley shelter but his position was terminated by the senior staffer who allegedly made these comments because, it seems, he was a whistleblower.
The senior staffer who allegedly said that he could hit a small dog to protect himself is Juan Rivera. At the time he made his unfortunate remarks he was at a meeting with employees. Because of the whistleblower’s disclosure, his words became public and he was asked about them by the news media. He said that he regretted making the remarks and said that he would never hurt an animal and has never mistreated one in his life.
He stressed that comments were only about self-defence. He said: “I regret my word choice and I understand they gave the wrong impression”.
He started working at Los Angeles Animal Services in April according to his LinkedIn profile. The profile was taken down shortly after the Los Angeles Times asked the mayor’s office about the profile and the apparent lack of experience of Rivera with animals.
Apparently, the LinkedIn profile said that he is a musician with experience in the arts, health care and education.
The two reasons why the story is interesting is both the words used by this senior staffer indicating that he is not ideally suited to be in the role and more seriously the fact that the whistleblower was sacked for highlighting this problem. As you no doubt know, the issue of sacking whistleblowers is commonly encountered everywhere and is totally against common sense and good business practice as it suppresses the airing of poor performance.
Dog walking as provided by L.A. Animal Services is carried out by volunteers. It appears, however, in a previous report from the Los Angeles Times that some dogs are not being walked for weeks or months because there is a severe staff shortage at the department.
The Animal Services’ interim general manager, Anette Ramirez, is investigating. She was asked whether Rivera faced disciplinary action and a spokeswoman for the department said that they don’t comment on personal investigations. And they refused to comment on the position regarding the whistleblower, Kusnier.
Kusnier said: “How can he perform those duties if he is scared of large dogs?”
Another volunteer found it demoralising that Kusnier had been sacked because of his whistleblowing as there is a shortage of volunteers and now there will be fewer volunteers to walk dogs.
The volunteers’ jobs are not protected in the usual way. Rivera said that he works at Animal Services because he loves animals and he wants to make their lives better. He said that he will “continue to do everything in my power to ensure our volunteers are treating our animals with compassion”.
Comment: to be honest, I think the story has been blown up out of proportion. Clearly, Rivera is not ideally suited to the job in terms of his qualifications and former experience but he may be a very good worker, very compassionate and well organised but the alleged lack of dog walking does not support this. We don’t have a report on that. We can’t prejudge people although his words were badly chosen. But they should not alone be sufficient for him to lose his job. It was just a mistake, badly chosen words. It depends upon his true thoughts however. We don’t know what those are and you can’t judge them by a few words that he has said.
