Correction officers seek collective bargaining help
By James Merriweather (Dover Bureau Reporter)
February 15 News Journal

A move is afoot among Delaware correctional officers to hand over collective bargaining to a Teamsters local in Maryland.
If they are successful, it would leave the elected seven-member executive board of the Delaware Correctional Officers Association with ceremonial duties only. Supporters of the move hope to force a vote on the plan at a general membership meeting Tuesday.
Under the proposal, officers would retain their memberships in the Delaware Correctional Officers Association, organized in February 1994 after the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees was decertified as bargaining agent.
But most union activities - including collective bargaining, administration, legislative lobbying and legal work - would be provided through a two - year service agreement with Teamsters Local 103 in Glen Burnie, Md.
Corrections officers have been meeting with the 3,600-memeber local for about a month to discuss the plan.
Cpl. Allan Deal of Sussex Correctional Institution near Georgetown, who favors Teamsters' involvement, said association leadership had ignored basic rights of the organization's 1,300 members.
He said a demand last month fro financial information, including the most recent audit, had not been honored.
"(The association will) do public relations and run the membership"Deal said of the executive board's projected role. The teamsters "will get most of the money because they're going the dirty work."
Sgt. Robert Proctor, a correctional officer at Wilmington's Gander Hill Prison and association president, would not comment Thursday on allegations by some officers of profligate spending and improper blocking of votes on the Teamsters and audit matters. He said those issues would be discussed Tuesday. He would not comment when asked if he would allow them to come to a vote.
Officers on Friday began a petition drive calling on the state Public Employees Review Board to order votes on the matters.
Thomas Ridgely, president and principal officer of Local 103, said Maryland correctional officers account for the majority of the local's membership.
The teamsters would get $16 of the monthly dues of $24.86 per member or about $250,00 a year from all members. The $8.86 balance would go to the association.
The executive board already has rejected the arrangement, and Proctor said DCOA shop stewards had been directed to oppose it or face suspension.
But predictions at a meeting of 40 officers Thursday at Citizens Hose Company in Smyrna were that the board's position would be rejected by the rank-and-file.
"It's north and south. We're together." said Sgt Dan Kobus, a correctional officer at SCI.