Union Seeks Increase in Security at State Offices : Grievances: The California State Employees Assn. cites the Oxnard rampage in its demands for alarms, cameras and guards.

SACRAMENTO —  Charging that the Oxnard unemployment office shooting rampage illustrates California’s failure to protect its employees, a state workers union filed a grievance Wednesday seeking increased security measures in the workplace.

The grievance, filed in Sacramento by the California State Employees Assn., asks the Employment Development Department to implement a host of remedies in all its offices.

“This means that the union is absolutely dead serious about increasing workplace safety in the wake of the Oxnard shootings,” union spokesman Drew Mendelson said.

Among other demands, the union wants emergency alarms, surveillance cameras, security guards and the training of workers to spot early signs of violent behavior.

“Homicides in the workplace are emerging as a major occupational threat to all workers and, in particular, public sector employees,” union President Yolanda Solari said. “We want to see EDD, as well as other state departments, follow through on a comprehensive statewide security program.”

Of the four people shot to death in Oxnard on Dec. 2 by unemployed computer engineer Alan Winterbourne, two were state workers. Four other Oxnard unemployment office employees suffered injuries in the spray of bullets.

Frustrated by seven years of joblessness, Winterbourne walked into Oxnard’s Employment Development Department office and opened fire with a 12-gauge shotgun and a .44-caliber revolver. During a subsequent chase, he fatally shot a police officer before he was killed by police.

If the Employment Development Department refuses the union’s demands, Mendelson said, the California State Employees Assn. will take the issue to arbitration.

But Anita Grandrath Gore, spokeswoman for the Employment Development Department, said a range of safety measures are already in place, and more are under study.

“We are currently looking at all of these (listed in the grievance) and others,” Gore said. “We certainly take security very seriously for our employees as well as for those who use our services.”

In fact, Gore said, on the day before Thanksgiving a department administrator had approved Oxnard employees’ wishes for a security guard.

That request, Gore said from Sacramento Wednesday, “has just reached this office.” She attributed the time lag to the holidays and normal department procedure. “I’m told it takes somewhere around two weeks on a typical request before getting a security guard there,” she said.

In the grievance, the union charges the state employment department with “failing to provide a safe and healthy workplace, free from recognized hazards associated with assault on the job.”

As part of the solution, the 130,000-member union asks that panic emergency alarms and security cameras be installed in areas where the public has access, or where employees work alone.

The employees’ union also wants its workers trained to detect early warning signs of violent behavior, and what to do when confronted by violence in the workplace.

The union said it will seek new laws allowing Cal/OSHA to levy fines against government agencies or private businesses for neglecting to take precautions on behalf of employees.

Meanwhile, the Ventura County coroner’s office said Wednesday that Winterbourne was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol when he went on the shooting rampage. Nor had he smoked a cigarette or ingested caffeine that morning.

“There was nothing in his system to lower his inhibitions,” Senior Deputy Coroner Craig Stevens said. Winterbourne’s blood, urine and other bodily fluids were screened for alcohol and a wide variety of drugs.

Times correspondent Julie Fields contributed to this story.