Fired Umstead worker fights to regain job

Woman says she was bias victim; state cites a threat to 'do voodoo'

RALEIGH -- After 35 years as an employee at John Umstead Hospital in Butner, Annie E. Allen says she was given an order that crossed the line.

A much younger supervisor complained that the 83-year-old linen room attendant at the state mental facility was taking too long to use the toilet. She was told she needed to ask permission before going to relieve herself.

"I told her she wasn't my mama," Allen recalled. "These ain't slavery times, and I'm not going to tell her every time I have to pee."

Allen said her supervisor, Annie Hight, 54, told her she was "too old" and sent her home.

Six months later Allen, who was called "Miss Annie" by co-workers, is hoping to regain her job folding sheets and pajamas for $11.73 an hour.

After she learned she had been fired, Allen found a lawyer with the help of the N.C. Public Service Workers Union. She filed a complaint against the state in March claiming that Hight discriminated against her on the basis of age and race. Allen is black. Hight is Asian, according to the suit.

Tom Lawrence, spokesman for the state Department of Health and Human Services, said Hight and Umstead administrators could not comment, citing personnel privacy restrictions.

In the state's response to Allen's complaint, Hight is quoted as saying Allen was "out of control," threatening to "do voodoo" on Hight and wring her neck. The supervisor also alleges Allen threw pajamas and called her a term used to refer to female dogs.

Allen said that never happened.

"I didn't say anything ugly to her," said Allen, who is about 5 feet tall and weighs about 100 pounds. "I wanted to knock her cold, but I didn't. I kept my peace."

She was part of a small army of elderly employees on the public payroll, often retained to plug staffing shortfalls and for specialized skills not mastered by whippersnappers. Personnel records show 840 state workers 70 or older and 75 active employees 80 and older.

She started in 1973

Allen is a spring chicken compared with some -- such as an 89-year-old doctor and a 91-year-old ferry crewman. Most are part-time workers.

Allen started as a housekeeper at Umstead in 1973 after serving as a maid at the hospital director's home. She worked full time cleaning hospital toilets and mopping floors during the week and earned extra cash by cleaning her boss's house on Saturdays.

In 2005, an administrator called her into his office and persuaded Allen to retire, telling her she could still work as a part-time employee. It sounded like a good deal. She got three checks every month -- from the hospital, the state retirement plan and Social Security.

"I retired on Friday and went back to work on Monday," Allen said.

Key protections lost

What Allen didn't realize was that by becoming a part-timer, she forfeited key personnel protections afforded full-time state employees, such as the right to appeal her dismissal to an administrative law judge.

When Allen sued, the state countered that after her retirement she was reclassified as a part-time, temporary employee and therefore was not entitled to appeal her dismissal.

In May, the director of the state Civil Rights Division, Lamont Goins, ruled his office had no jurisdiction and forwarded the case to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Charlotte.

Allen's attorney, Elizabeth M. Haddix of Pittsboro, acknowledges her client faces an uphill fight if she elects to square off against the state Attorney General's Office in federal court.

"It was disgraceful, the way she was terminated after giving so many years of service to the state," said Haddix, who has handled the case pro bono. "She was unilaterally sent home with no explanation other than a few comments from her supervisor about her being old and no longer useful."

No documentation

In its written response to Allen's lawsuit, the state Division of Human Resources said Allen was fired Jan. 14 because of "unacceptable personal conduct and unsatisfactory job performance." However, her personnel file contains no termination letter, documentation of the altercation with Hight or indication she was a problem employee.

The file, released by the state at Allen's behest, does contain accounts of her superior work, such as a 2004 letter from a UNC-Chapel Hill researcher who said Allen provided "outstanding service" assisting geriatric patients in filling out questionnaires about the effects of light therapy.

"Annie exceeded all of the terms of her employment, and voluntarily went far beyond the call of duty in her contributions to the success of the study," wrote Dr. Philip Sloane, co-chairman of UNC's Department of Family Medicine.

Sitting in the tiny parlor of her Creedmoor house last month, Allen proudly showed off a plaque she was presented at Umstead in 2005 lauding her decades of meritorious service.

She'd still like to go back to work, if the state would let her.

"I don't know what else to do with myself," Allen said.