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A fired worker who complained about safety problems and harassment at the Pima County Forensic Science Center should be protected as a whistle-blower, says the Industrial Commission of Arizona.

The state's workplace-safety agency is suing Pima County, saying the worker, Misty Burdick, was wrongly fired and deserves back pay.

The Forensic Science Center, 2825 E. District St., is responsible for autopsies and other cause-of-death investigations for most of Southern Arizona, and workers there have a high workload due to border-crosser deaths.

Burdick had been working at the morgue as an assistant in autopsies for a few weeks when she complained about a co-worker, according to the lawsuit. She had accidentally stuck her thumb with a contaminated needle and said a co-worker caused the accident by standing too close to her and harassing her.

A couple of months later, Burdick again complained about her co-worker, claiming he threw bloody gloves across the autopsy room into the trash, according to the lawsuit.

Without precautions, workers can be exposed to blood-borne diseases.

In a grievance report, a county investigator referred to the co-worker's behavior as "idiosyncrasies."

The supervisor, Patti Nelson, told Burdick "that this is a man's world and I need to suck it up," Burdick said in a later complaint. Nelson said she couldn't comment for this article.

Other county officials did not return calls Thursday.

Nelson told a county investigator that Burdick told her four or five times she would quit if Nelson didn't fire the co-worker, so Nelson invited Burdick to resign. A doctor told the investigator that there were problems with both workers, but they weren't fired because work needed to be done, according to a grievance report.

The problems weren't being addressed, Burdick claims, and she filed a discrimination grievance with the county, which was upheld.

The county agreed that "no future harassment will be tolerated," according to the grievance report.

The county has had previous problems with harassment. In 2000, former medical examiner employee Michelle Awana sued the county, claiming that sexual harassment by Dr. Andrew Sibley and other employees forced her to quit. In 2003, Sibley sued the county, alleging it maligned him.

Burdick was fired on June 23 during her new-employee probation, a few weeks after another accident at work when a bone saw gave her an electric shock, records show.

She took her complaints to the state level, where officials took her side.

Investigators with the Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health found "egregious" violations during a workplace inspection and fined Pima County $29,500.

State investigators also determined Burdick was discriminated against for being female.

"I was terminated by Nelson for too many accidents, too many paperwork problems and lateness, which I believe to be a pretext for terminating me because I complained of sexual harassment," she told the Arizona Attorney General's Office in a formal complaint.

The Industrial Commission is asking for lost pay with interest for Burdick, who is now serving as an active-duty veterinary technician for the Army in Fort Hood, 80 miles north of Austin, Texas.