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Corrections Union Files Complaint Against State Over Holidays
July 4, 2013
The state is trying to illegally take away time off from corrections officers, according to a complaint filed Wednesday by the workers’ union.
Teamsters Local 2011, a union representing 17,000 employees of the Department of Corrections, filed the eight-page complaint with the Public Employees Relations Commission, which referees disputes over labor practices that involve state workers.
The union’s complaint focuses on corrections officers who work holidays. Under a previous agreement between the union and the state, the officers would have to forfeit the time they earn for working those holidays if they don’t take the days off within a certain time frame.
Instead, the union wants to make sure that employees get paid for working holidays if, for safety reasons, the agency can’t allow workers to take those days off. After negotiations between the union and the state failed to produce an agreement, the Legislature approved the state’s proposed language as part of its annual bill resolving labor disputes.
Teamsters International Vice President Ken Wood said his organization tried to work with the state during negotiations.
“It’s unfortunate that the state’s representatives showed an unwillingness to do the right thing,” Wood said in a news release announcing the action. “Our correctional officers should not be required to work and then have their earned time taken away from them. We will pursue all legal avenues to have the problem corrected and our dedicated officers made whole.”
Ann Howard, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, said the agency had not seen the allegations.
“We have not received any official notice of this complaint being filed,” she wrote in an email.
It’s not the first time the union and the state have clashed over wages and working conditions. The Teamsters announced last month that 700 current and retired corrections officers had reached a $600,000 settlement with the state over allegations that DOC violated wage and hour rules.
The officers had worked in Raiford, home to the Union Correctional Institution, and will get compensation for the overtime they worked between December 2009 and December 2011.
by The News Service of Florida
Comments
8 Responses to “Corrections Union Files Complaint Against State Over Holidays”
David, after reading a few of your comments, I think I’m in love! You make so much sense and I’ve agreed with EVERYTHING.
To SW on July 5th, 2013 6:29 am – For some much needed background information left out of this article consider the following:
1. Up until just after Rick Scott came into office Correctional Officers were allowed to “bank” special comp. leave. This was due to the fact that getting time off is almost impossible due to how our time off is done almost a year in advance and by time and rank and staffing levels. So we were able to keep the leave to use at a later date when we were properly staffed which has never happened.
2. Per 60L-34.0031 Regular Time and Overtime found at the following website https://www.flrules.org/gateway/RuleNo.asp?title=ATTENDANCE%20AND%20LEAVE&ID=60L-34.0031 on the Florida Administrative Code states “(d) At the close of business on December 31 and June 30 of each year, or other dates approved by the Department, pay the employee for all unused credits at the employee’s straight time regular hourly rate of pay.” So requesting payout is within the rules of the Florida Administrative code.
3. Rick Scott came in and changed the policy to use it or lose it (Believed by Correctional officers to be used as an attempt to burn off the 22 million owed to them in unused time so he could privatize the prisons.) so that those of us with 400 hours of vacation and almost 900 hours of special comp. to lose our vacation time into sick because we are compelled to use our Special Comp. time before vacation time but then deny 90% of our time off requests “due to staffing levels and institutional need”.
4. They main reasons we have accrued so much time is due to just making critical shift means almost no time off. At one point my facility was at a 20.8% vacancy rate for officers. Meaning 1 out of 5 positions was empty. In 2 years we have lost half of our staff only to replace them with new staff.
When you sign a contract with someone shouldn’t they have to follow it? I could go on about the pension issue as well but I will leave that be. All we want is to have either time with our families or the money owed per policy.
Bob, you had me at “loose the bennifits”.
As a retired corrections officer it may sound good to tell the corrections officer to take time off or lose it, but most prisons in the state of Florida are so short of staff that some one has to work overtime in order for some one to take off. So tell me how do you take off if your supervisor is so short of help that he or she can not authorize the leave. Most prisons in the state are getting dangerously short of staff yet no one seems to care.
Either take the time off or loose the bennifits. Maby your governer will eleminated all thoes freebeesI. Great thing just like he’s doing with the corrections healthcare. You voted for that. Stop whinning.
I realized that David when I joined the military.
The best way to deal with folks that cannot deal squarely is what they don’t know won’t hurt them and what they cannot detect, they cannot affect or correct.
The article doesn’t list the specific terms of the contract. However, it does reference a previous agreement between the state and the union regarding the issue at hand. The implication is since no negotiated agreement was reached, the previous agreement was continued.
I am suspect of the union’s stand. Many governmental agencies offer paid off time, paid overtime or paid compensatory time off for holidays worked by employees, depending on policies/agreements. Often, too, compensatory banks are limited to an accrual amount; once reached and not taken, the bank ceases to accrue. Maybe this is the case?
It is bad when people in government won’t obey the law regarding contracts they agreed upon.