Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

A Haines Borough employee’s confidential complaint of workplace violence to the state’s Occupational Safety and Health department has prompted additional discussion of working conditions at the borough’s administration building.

On July 13, the state received a complaint from a borough employee alleging “several instances of workplace violence due to visitors harassing, intimidating, and (committing) other threatening behavior towards employees.”

AKOSH acting chief of enforcement Ron Anderson did not provide specifics of the reported “instances” of workplace violence. The identity of the employee who made the report is confidential.

In a July 19 letter to the borough, Anderson said AKOSH hasn’t determined whether the alleged hazards actually exist, and that the organization would not be conducting an inspection “at this time.”

Instead, Anderson urged the borough administration to investigate the allegations and make any necessary modifications.

In his response to Anderson, manager Bill Seward referenced the June 29 incident between two citizens and former planning and zoning technician Tracy Cui that “the employee perceived as a threat that made her feel very uncomfortable.”

Cui, who left town at the beginning of July and wasn’t employed by the borough at the time of the complaint’s filing, was adamant that she did not file the report.

While Seward said employees have told him about “recent and past disturbances involving the safety and wellbeing of staff in (the administration) building,” he admitted at Tuesday’s assembly meeting that the borough has no formal complaints on record.

“We have no documented incidents. In fact, to be quite frank, we did not have a workplace violence program at all, so we’re kind of developing one now,” Seward said.

After the June 29 incident and discussions with staff about past encounters, Seward began working with staff to “entertain ideas to enhance physical security in the workplace.” One idea included a locking door system, where members of the public would be buzzed in to the building.

The assembly shut that idea down, passing a motion at its July 12 meeting that directed Seward to discontinue any efforts to “restrict or require any locking access that would prevent the public from doing their business.”

Seward interpreted the motion as the majority of the assembly desiring to “maintain the status quo of very open public access to employees” and not make any physical changes to the administration building reception area.

Instead, Seward drafted a workplace violence policy and employee training program. The training would include incident documentation procedures, how to file a police report, workplace violence awareness and de-escalation strategies.

Seward said the draft policy will come to the assembly at its Aug. 9 meeting.

Assembly member Margaret Friedenauer said she and assembly member Ron Jackson spoke with Seward and borough attorney Patrick Munson this week about the AKOSH complaint.

“I left that discussion feeling confident that we’re doing what needs to be done at this point to satisfy (AKOSH). They could come back and say they want to see more modifications, but right now, they aren’t saying specifically what has to happen,” Friedenauer said.

Friedenauer said while it would be helpful to have more detail about the incidents referred to in the complaint, she understands why the information and identity of the reporter are confidential.

“Those things are very sensitive. You have a right to report those things without fear of retaliation,” she said.

Though the AKOSH correspondence appeared on the electronic copy of the assembly’s agenda, by Tuesday’s meeting it had disappeared from the paper copies distributed at the meeting. The removal prompted some confusion, but clerk Julie Cozzi said the omission was a mistake and that she had accidentally printed out an earlier version of the agenda.