Agriculture civil rights chief ready to sow seeds of change

While Vernon Parker settles into his new role at the Agriculture Department, employee advocates are waiting to see how the new assistant secretary for civil rights will eradicate what they see as pervasive ethnic and gender discrimination at the department.

During the past several years, the Agriculture Department has faced a series of discrimination class action lawsuits from black farmers and minority employees, who maintain that the catalyst for change must come from the department's leadership. When Parker was confirmed by the Senate in March, he was the first person to hold the new position at the department. The White House has charged the former general counsel for the Office of Personnel Management and special assistant to the first President Bush with changing the climate at Agriculture, a task that a member of one class action lawsuit admits will be a difficult one.

"I do know what he is up against," said Allen Spencer, lead agent in a class action lawsuit that includes 10,000 black employees. "He is in a situation where he has to do battle and believe me, the enemy is not going to treat him kindly."

Mon Yee, a member of the Asian Pacific Islander Organization, which advocates for that minority group at the department, fears Parker may be in over his head.

"I'm not sure that Mr. Parker is truly aware of the tremendous mantle of responsibility that he has taken on," Yee said. "I think that he is completely a neophyte and very naive about what he needs to do. For instance, I think that Mr. Parker, with all his good intentions, is relying too much on a core group of people that have not produced anything at USDA for the last 10 years."

But Parker, who was interim pastor of a church before his appointment to his new post at Agriculture, said that experience, coupled with his background in government, has prepared him for his new role.

"Working as a pastor, you learn to deal with human feelings, you learn to meet people at their need," Parker said recently during an interview with Government Executive. "I learned patience and that will help me, along with the experience at OPM where I dealt with Title 7 and [the Merit Systems Protection Board]."

Parker has spent the months since his confirmation meeting with staffers in the Office of Civil Rights, outlining problems that need to be addressed and picking their brains for options.

"I relied on the knowledge of folks who have worked here, some of them for 30 years," Parker said. "I asked, 'What are some of the things that you tried before and were told that you could not do? What are some of the things that you tried before and they didn't work, but you knew if you tweaked them they you'd have greater success? And what are some of the things that you've always dreamed about doing, but no one ever paid attention to you?'"

Now Parker has developed a civil rights initiative and is waiting for its approval by the department's sub-cabinet [undersecretaries] so that he can move forward in reducing the backlog of 2,055 Equal Employment Opportunity complaints from department employees.

"Our goal within one year is to eliminate or to reduce the inventory of cases and to resolve them in a fair and equitable manner," Parker said. "And it's a very lofty goal to reduce the inventory, but even greater than that, we have to put preventive measures in to ensure that we don't get back up to the level that we currently are."

Part of that initiative includes making greater use of early intervention measures, such as alternative dispute resolution and mediation. "If there is early intervention, we can meet a person when it's fresh, and if we can address these issues early then we believe that we can get rid of further cases that are being filed because of reprisal."

Parker must focus on holding managers accountable, said Lawrence Lucas, president of USDA's Coalition of Minority Employees. The coalition, formed in 1994, advocates on behalf of racial minorities, women and disabled employees of the Agriculture Department.

"I would like to see him establish an accountability unit that would rate the performance of civil rights directors, managers and administrators, as it relates to meeting the mission and goals of civil rights at the department," Lucas said. "And 'holding accountable' means he would be involved in evaluating their performance at the end of the year."

Parker said he recognizes the role that managers play in advancing civil rights initiatives at the department. "If managers aren't effectively managing, people will file complaints," he said.

Spencer, the lead agent in the class action lawsuit, insisted that Parker must make some organizational changes, including firing some people and insisting on autonomy to bring about change at the department.

"Take up the banner and outwardly challenge some people in the Office of General Counsel," Spencer said. "Of course that's very risky, but those are the risks I would expect a political appointee to take."

Both Lucas and Spencer are prepared to step back and give Parker time to show what he can do.

"Civil rights requires passion, the will to do the right thing; civil rights is a moral issue," Spencer said. "I'm hoping that Vernon Parker has the passion and the spirit and the will to do the right thing and to take some risks."