Result of furloughs - $1 billion liability Prison guards, supervisors rack up millions of hours in paid time off

Result of furloughs - $1 billion liability
Prison guards, supervisors rack up millions of hours in paid time off
Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 8, 2011

California prison guards and their supervisors have racked up 33.2 million hours of vacation, sick and other paid time off - an astounding accumulation that amounts to nearly half a year per worker.

It also adds up to a $1 billion liability for taxpayers of the deficit-plagued state.

Poor management at California's prisons has for years allowed workers to stock up on generous amounts of paid time off - a benefit that employees must either use or cash out when they retire. But the numbers swelled when former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger imposed furloughs in 2009, forcing prison guards and their supervisors to take unpaid days off each month to help save state cash.

Furloughs are problematic at California's 33 state prisons, all of which operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week and have thousands of unfilled prison guard positions. Workers have been coming in on their furlough days and banking paid time off.

"You can't shut prisons down," Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Oscar Hidalgo said. "You have to keep them operational. You have to cover every post. You don't want to endanger staff by not doing that."

Overtime a given

For prison guards, overtime is practically a given. According to JeVaughn Baker, a spokesman for the prison guard union, there are about 3,000 vacancies for corrections guards alone; Hidalgo said the number is around 2,000. Prison guards, like most public safety employees, do not work a normal 40-hour week; instead, they work 164 hours in a 28-day cycle. Any time over that amount is overtime.

Although Schwarzenegger's three-day-a-month furlough policy ended last year for most state employees, it is still in place for prison guards as they continue to negotiate a contract with Gov. Jerry Brown's administration.

"This was a unilateral action by the (former) governor, and it turned out to be a very misguided policy," said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento. "It was done across the board, without distinguishing or differentiating between workplaces."

Brown's office referred questions about the issue to Hidalgo, who acknowledged that furloughs have increased the amount of time on the books.

"The reality is, it became a very difficult policy to implement and manage over a long period of time," he said. "It's been a challenge since day one."

Schwarzenegger ordered most state workers onto two-day-a-month furloughs in February 2009, as the state faced a $42 billion deficit. The order, which impacted about 200,000 employees, was later extended to three days a month. Schwarzenegger exempted some 24/7 workers, including California Highway Patrol officers and firefighters, but not prison workers.

Despite the furloughs and other cost-cutting measures, California now faces a $26.6 billion budget deficit in its general fund.

Bad relationship

The state's 28,628 prison guards had an acrimonious relationship with Schwarzenegger, and since 2007 have been working under a contract imposed by his administration. Another 5,243 prison supervisors and managers employed by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation must still take one furlough day a month, Hidalgo said, down from three.

Together, those 33,871 employees account for the 33.2 million hours of banked time off on the books. Of that total, just 4.4 million is furlough time; but sick and vacation time have also soared, because furlough hours are used first when prison officials do take time off.

Hidalgo said Brown's election "breathed new life" into negotiations with the prison guards union, and added that a contract would help the department start chipping away at the banked time off.

"The resolution would be to get a contract in place that is fair to employees and the state, so we can start depleting it over a long period of time," he said.

The fact that corrections employees have saved large amounts of paid time is not a new issue. In January 2000, state auditors warned that poor management of sick time was causing the prison agency to pay excessive overtime, that the department could face a cash flow problem if too many employees retired at once and cashed out their balances, and that the entire situation has the perverse effect of discouraging workers from seeking promotion "because they can easily earn as much as, or more than, their supervisors by working overtime."

Problem made worse

In October 2009, a report by the Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes concluded that furloughs severely compounded the problem - driving up unused vacation time by 500 percent compared to the year before.

Meanwhile, state workers who retire and cash out are compensated for all the banked hours at their highest pay rate.

The Senate report said the state's liability can be calculated by using the top pay rate for a prison guard: $34.91 an hour. Multiplied by 33.2 million hours, the liability is around $1.15 billion. It could be higher: In most cases, supervisors and managers make even more.

But Hidalgo noted that not everyone is near retiring.

"There are employees at retirement age that probably have a significant bank of vacation time they have accrued; however, we also have young employees that aren't considering retiring, and will need to deplete that time over some years," he said. In the meantime, guards continue to rack up leave hours.

"The numbers are just absolutely staggering," said Baker, the union spokesman. "Naturally, with more than 30,000 members, there are going to be large balances, but the number has been severely compounded by the previous administration imposing furloughs."

Baker said the inability of employees who work in a high-stress environment, such as prisons, to take time off is having another detrimental effect.

"We prefer our members have time off - there are mental health concerns and safety issues, and they simply want to be able to spend time with their families," he said.

E-mail Marisa Lagos at mlagos@sfchronicle.com.

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