Preface
"By integrating compliance efforts and deploying the care competence of human resources in multiple corporate divisions, companies reap efficiencies that help keep regulations from dragging
them into red ink.
-- John Rossheim in "Human Resources Is Tapped to Address New
Compliance Complexities" from Workforce Management, July 2004: p.74.
Introduction
Information has become the lifeblood of every 21st century corporation. This is especially true of a busy urban hospital such Baptist-Lutheran Medical Center. The orderly flow of accurate information constitutes a network essential to every hospital's survival, and when that informational network begins to break down, the hospital's very survival becomes threatened. Thus it is that when the flow of information concerning something as seemingly trivial as the quality of a hospital security officer's work product becomes tainted by the viruses of slander, cultural prejudice, or managerial negligence, the resultant breakdown in the orderly flow of accurate information can become like the proverbial nail in the metaphorical horse's shoe, "for want of which" (as the saying goes), the horse, the rider, the cavalry, and finally the battle are lost, in an ineluctable chain of causation.
And that is the short version of how it is that this ad hoc Peer Review Panel is being convened and why it is that the work of this panel -- and, therefore, of each of you, as its constituent members -- is so vital to the health and survival of this hospital family to whose mission we've all devoted so much of our life energy.
Harassment Reported to Ethics & Compliance Officer
At around 4:30 on the afternoon of Friday, October 22nd of last year, Chief Operations Officer
Brian Lidiak summoned Officer James Bolton and myself to his office. Evidently, a recently
terminated security officer named Brian Deaver had filed a formal complaint through HCA’s
Ethics & Compliance Hotline (1-800-455-1996), charging B-LMC’s campus security supervisor
Bill Ludwig with racism and harassment, and had named James and myself as having been
victims of Supvr. Ludwig’s abuse. Acting in his then-capacity as B-LMC’s Ethics & Compliance
Officer, Mr. Lidiak indicated to us that he was investigating these serious allegations,
which had been passed along to him by the E & C people at corporate headquarters in Nashville
James told Mr. Lidiak that he did not feel that he'd been the target of Supvr. Ludwig's racism, while I, on the other hand, made it abundantly clear that I most certainly had been the frequent target of a persistent pattern of harassment by Supvr. Ludwig over the past several months. For the next half hour or so, I sat with Mr. Lidiak in his office, outlining for him some of the specifics of Supvr. Ludwig's harassment of me and answering his questions about the background of this pattern of harassment, as well as about Supvr. Ludwig's likely motives, and about a closely related overall pattern of corruption within HCA-Midwest's security department, including slander, falsification of documents and a highly counterproductive cronyism which constituted a clear
violation of both the letter and the spirit of HCA policy.
In response to my harassment complaint, Mr. Lidiak assured me that he would see to it that the problem was addressed and corrected immediately. He urged me in the strongest possible language to bring any future E & C issues directly to him, rather than to get Nashville involved
again in the airing of B-LMC’s dirty laundry.
Important Note
And as of this writing, I have honored Mr. Lidiak's request by not, as yet, taking this matter outside of our BLMC family. I still believe in B-LMC's mission and will continue to support it with all my heart and energy, no matter what the outcome of the problem-solving process in which we
now find ourselves at work.
Request for Copies from My B-LMC H.R. File
In an effort to substantiate the harassment complaint I had made to B-LMC's E & C Officer in late October of last year, I sent a memo via company e-mail to B-LMC's HR Director Dennis Johnson in November of last year, requesting photocopies of several key documents in my HR file, most notably my 2002 and 2003 Annual Evaluations, both of which contain significant false statements concerning my job performance, slandering me by insinuating that I had delivered a less-than-excellent work product while assigned to the two Health Midwest (now HCA-Midwest) facilities in Johnson County, Kansas. Director Johnson e-mailed back to me that HCA policy placed thus and such guidelines around any employee copying parts of his or her personnel file, and we were still working out the details of that process at the time of my wrongful termination on February 25th of this year
Wrongful Termination
At around 2:45 on the afternoon of February 25th of this year, Supvr. Ludwig's yearlong persistent pattern of harassment reached its zenith with his (in collusion with Corporate Security Director Jim Gnefkow) wrongfully terminating me for no cause other than my following HCA and departmental policy. Details of the events immediately leading up to my wrongful termination may be found in the attached narrative account, prepared at the request of HR Director Johnson, which I have condensed and edited for the purpose of this presentation and which is intended to be read prior to my visual presentation to your panel of ten (10) color snapshots of the north side of the hospital campus, illustrating the sequence of events recounted in the attached narrative.
B-LMC’s Problem-Solving Process
Sitting in Sue Gilland's office within the HR suite, with Ms. Gilland, Director Gnefkow and Supervisor Ludwig, on the afternoon of 02/25/05, and having just been informed by Director Gnefkow that I was going to be terminated for (in essence) following policy, the first words out of my mouth were to Ms. Gilland. Pointing to Director Gnefkow and Supvr. Ludwig, I said to Ms. Gilland: "I thought Brian Lidiak was going to deal with these guys." Thus began the problem-solving process which has culminated in the convening of your panel and my composing this outline of events to be presented to you panel at least a few days prior to my meeting with you on the afternoon of September 20th to answer your questions. Ms. Gilland gave me the necessary forms for filing a formal grievance and asked that I return them to HR no later than March 7th,
which I did.
Falling Through the Cracks
That was six (6) months ago. I personally handed the attached "Problem-Solving Form" to Director Johnson in HR on Monday, March 7th. I'm drafting this outline for your panel on the Wednesday after Labor Day, September 7th. How it's been that so much time has elapsed before we reached this stage of the hospital's problem-solving process is anybody's guess. I'm hoping that the panel will take note of the fact that I myself have made every attempt to keep fingerpointing to an absolute minimum throughout this process and throughout this document. It would seem that Director Johnson described the situation most succinctly when he recently commented to me that my case had simply fallen through the cracks.
My April 14th Meeting with Mr. Lidiak
Sometime around the end of March (of this year), I received a call from Director Johnson to set up an appointment with Mr. Lidiak, even though the job of Ethics & Compliance Officer had, by then, passed into other hands. Nonetheless, on the afternoon of April 14th, I met with Mr. Lidiak in his office for perhaps an hour. He had me describe for him briefly my version of how it was that I'd been wrongfully terminated, approximately six weeks earlier, and what specific remedy I
deemed to be appropriate at that juncture.
The short version of my response to him regarding a remedy was, in addition to the remedy I'd proposed in my March 7th "Problem-Solving Form" (attached), that I be compensated for that portion of my personal retirement savings I'd been forced to liquidate (with substantial tax consequences) in order to pay my bills over the previous six weeks. I also suggested (though I did NOT by any means demand) a full investigation of Supvr. Ludwig's and Director Gnefkow's transparent collusion in their campaign to set me up for wrongful termination. I suggested that any such fact-finding project might prudently begin by interviewing several of the hospital's other security officers with whom Supvr. Ludwig had shared his unbridled hatred of me and his almost sexually perverse desire to get me fired.
The Retaliation Issue
It was at this point in my April 14th conversation with Mr. Lidiak that the issue of retaliation came up. Ever since I transferred to B-LMC in the winter of 2003, it has been a frequently discussed article of faith among rank and file B-LMC security officers that any criticism whatsoever of our department managers -- including imagined criticism -- would be met, at some point down the line, with retaliation. When Mr. Lidiak stated to me that everything appeared to him to be quiet and running smoothly in B-LMC's security department, I explained to him that that was because of the constant threat of retaliation which hung over the head of every security officer. I was surprised that this bit of common knowledge came as a surprise to him.
Nevertheless, I reminded him that I had tried to make it clear to him during our conversation back on October 22nd that, ever since Jim Gnefkow had taken over as Corporate Security Director, the department had been run like a private little fiefdom within with Health Midwest's -- and then HCA Midwest's -- legitimate corporate structure, as though Tony Soprano and his lieutenants had managed to imbed their testosterone-poisoned brand of lawlessness inside an otherwise respectable enterprise. And I warned Mr. Lidiak, as I had done back in October, in phraseology reminiscent of John Dean's warning President Nixon that there was "a cancer on the Presidency," that Director Gnefkow and Supvr. Ludwig were the type of loose cannons who were likely to end up costing the company a bundle in perfectly avoidable litigation, damaging publicity and red ink.
Mr. Lidiak assured me that he’d be getting back to me.
May & June
Between April 14th and July 1st, I heard nothing from anyone at the managerial or administrative level at B-LMC. This, despite the fact that I had e-mailed Mr. Lidiak on May 11th, requesting an update on the status of the agenda he and I had discussed in April meeting, and had left two
separate voice messages in his mailbox (approximately two weeks apart), neither of which was returned. Finally, I e-mailed him again on June 12th, it having become apparent that desperate measures were in order if I were ever going to be afforded due process by the hospital's
administrative leadership.
In an undated e-mail which Mr. Lidiak seems to have sent on July 1st, he makes the claim that my firing had been justified. This, despite my having informed him back on October 22nd and again on April 14th that an integral component in Supvr. Ludwig's harassment of me was his intentional falsifying of documentation concerning my job performance, as well as his singling me out for selective enforcement of his own distorted interpretation of what even
constitutes departmental policy.
Selective Enforcement
This seems like as good as time as any to factor into our equation this fundamental tenet of corporate management: selective enforcement constitutes harassment.
Due Diligence
In an apparent effort to obfuscate around the fact that he himself had dropped the ball (i.e. had not exercise due diligence) in dealing with my harassment complaint against Supvr. Ludwig, Mr. Lidiak decided, per his July 1st e-mail to me, to conveniently pretend that my firing was "justified," even though my firing was clearly based upon distortions of key facts regarding my job performance, which he himself KNEW to be distortions. For whatever reasons, Mr. Lidiak has displayed a powerful aversion to confronting Supvr. Ludwig and holding him accountable for his
shamelessly unprofessional, inappropriate, noncompliant behavior toward me.
Who Will Watch The Watchers?
When we take this factor into account, it's little wonder that Supvr. Ludwig (in collusion with Director Gnefkow) felt at liberty to violate HCA policy, as well as my right to due process, by wrongfully terminating me for essentially no cause on February 25th. They did it because they
knew they could get away with it. (QED)
Meritocracy Requires That We Get The Facts Straight
Because of close family ties between B-LMC's Chief Executive Officer Darrell Moore and myself, which go all the way back to earliest childhood (His family lived five doors down from mine.), I had gone out of my way to leave Darrell out of the fundamentally political imbroglio I'd been dragged into by Director Gnefkow and Supvr. Ludwig. Even after I'd been wrongfully terminated on February 25th, I made it a point NOT to contact him, out of consideration for the delicacy of his position as the hospital's CEO. However, when I received Mr. Lidiak's e-mail on July 1st, I realized that the viable options available to me were either to "go outside our hospital family" by
phoning HCA’s Ethics & Compliance Hotline or appealing directly to Darrell.
At the moment, I feel that I made the right decision by firing off a confidential July 3rd e-mail to Darrell. I mention all of this here primarily by way of providing context to my quoting this brief excerpt from what needs must remain otherwise confidential:
The journey of our corporate family at Baptist-Lutheran Medical Center is at a crossroads. Only as a meritocracy can any corporate family survive in America in the 21st century. And as you know, the heart and soul of any meritocracy is getting the facts straight.
The Big “However”
However . . . since Jim Gnefkow took over as Corporate Director of HCA Midwest's security department, that department has descended into being less and less of a meritocracy, because any semblance of meritocracy would conflict with Director Gnefkow's agenda of running the department as his private little fiefdom. Never was this more the case than when he handpicked Supvr. Ludwig to operate as his representative at B-LMC by railroading the one officer, Galen Green, with the education, corporate experience, communications skills, people skills, maturity and dedication to one day replace him (Gnefkow), if and when the need should arise, and who thus posed an ever-present threat (at least in Gnefkow's own mind) to his job security, his comfortable niche, surrounded and protected by his stooges, his buffers.
In this type of hostile work environment, no employee is safe to simply go about the daily business of turning in an excellent work product. Because, if Galen Green isn't safe, then nobody is safe. We can “take that to the bank” (as the cliché goes).
A Quick Comparison & Contrast
I'm a 56-year-old former college English teacher with a master's degree (seven years of college) and a strong background in advertising, public relations, marketing, corporate communications and, of course, safety & security. Before I became the target of Supvr. Ludwig's and Director Gnefkow's harassment, culminating in my wrongful termination six months ago, I'd served as a hospital security officer for Health Midwest and then for HCA-Midwest for nine (9) years. [Hire date: April 24, 1996.] Altogether, I have eleven years of experience in the field of safety & security. The mendacious bigot who targeted me for harassment, lied about me behind my back, and then fired me in retaliation for my reporting him to the HCA Ethics & Compliance Officer, on the other hand, is young enough to be my son, has less than one fifth of my formal education and corporate experience, and only about half as much seniority with this company.
The Key Question to Ask Ourselves
The bottom line question that each of you on the Peer Review Panel must ask yourself is, in fact, a two-part question:
a) If Galen Green had not been at work on that fateful morning of Friday, February 25th, and Supvr. Ludwig had given a different officer the same instructions that he gave me, and had that officer followed his instructions in exactly the same way I did, would Supvr. Ludwig have fired that officer?
b) If Supvr. Ludwig had not been at work on that fateful morning, so that I'd have been working with a different supervisor who gave me the very same instructions that Supvr. Ludwig did, which I followed exactly as I did Supvr. Ludwig's instructions, would that supervisor have fired me?
If the answer to either of these questions is "yes," then my being fired was justified. If, on the other hand, the answer to either of these questions is "no," then my being fired was a case of wrongful termination.
Our Three Most Viable Options
And since the obvious answer to both of these questions is "no," meaning that I've been the victim of wrongful termination, then the only issue left for us to address is that of remedy. Please allow me to preface my own preferences concerning an appropriate remedy to this situation by saying that I wholeheartedly share the hospital administration's position that any resolution decided upon should:
> Represent a win-win outcome for all parties involved;
> Include my willingly signing a standard confidentiality agreement;
< Be made outside of the public view, especially that of the media.
OPTION #1: I love my job and have dedicated much of my working life to supporting the mission of our hospital system in serving the Greater Kansas City community. I'm particularly proud of how my role in the daily life of our hospital family has invited me to live out my personal values of showing respect for diversity, i.e. respect for people of all races, ethnicities, cultural backgrounds, life-circumstances and lifestyles. And clearly, the HCA hospital security officer of the future will need to be encouraged more and more to share these values.
My first preference, therefore, is to have my job back. This would include, of course, my signing the aforementioned confidentiality agreement, as well receiving full back pay for the six months or so that I've been off the job, along with reimbursement for lost vacation time (PTO) and return to my previous senority status.
The obvious fly in the ointment is that Supvr. Ludwig and Director Gnefkow would still pose as immediate a threat as they did six months ago, to my being allowed to go peacefully about doing my job with hindrance or harassment. The silver lining in this cloud is, of course, the fact that both federal regulations (including, but not limited to, Sarbanes-Oxley) and HCA corporate policy provide numerous mechanisms for addressing the case of "problem children" such as Director Gnefkow and Supvr. Ludwig.
OPTION #2: If, however, my being reinstated in B-LMC's security department (as I originally requested in the "Problem-Solving Form" I filed with HR, back on March 7th) is deemed by the hospital's administrators to be too awkward, too inconvenient or too cumbersome to prove feasible, then certainly viable alternatives abound. One such remedy which I would find acceptable would be for me to be rehired by the hospital to fill a position in some other department, such as public relations, administration or human resources, so long as my new position was appropriate to (commensurate with) my level of education and corporate experience. As I shared with you earlier in this statement, I hold an M.A. in English and have a strong background in advertising, public relations, marketing and corporate communications.
Moreover, my organizational and people skills are excellent.
Naturally, any such remedy would include the aforementioned full back pay for worktime lost, along with reimbursement for lost vacation time (PTO) and return to my previous seniority status.
OPTION #3: In the event that B-LMC administrators find that no such suitable position for me is available, either inside or outside of the security department, I would consider it an acceptable remedy to my wrongful termination (at this point in time, at least) to receive only the aforementioned six months back pay in a lump sum (approximately $12K), along with the salary I would have received for the remainder of the 2005 calendar year (also approximately $12K) as a severance package, in addition to the written guarantee of at least two glowing references from the B-LMC administration and human resources departments, so that I can get on with my life.
Bearing in mine that 56 is a fairly advanced age for a man such as myself to be trying to embark upon a new career path, I think you'll agree that such a modest cash settlement along with a pair of highly favorable recommendations to future prospective employers constitutes about as minimal an outlay of redress for a wrongful termination (at the age of 56, after nine years of dedicated service) as can be imagined in today's labor dynamic. And, once again, I would be more than happy to sign a standard confidentiality agreement as part of any such cash settlement.
Conclusion
I want to conclude this statement where I began it, by focusing upon the basic reality that information (i.e. the orderly flow of accurate information) is the lifeblood of every 21st century corporation, particularly one like Baptist-Lutheran Medical Center. It is my most fervent wish that the time and energy that I've taken to prepare this statement for your panel and that you've taken to study it will eventually prove to have reddened and enriched the lifeblood of our entire hospital family and of the vital mission we all share.
Thanks for your patient attention.
Sincerely,
Galen Green
(816-807-4957)
September 14, 2005
Kansas City, MO
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