Delaware State News
DOVER — It's late June and the Delaware General Assembly is in the final days of session.
Last-minute budget adjustments are under way. Scores of lobbyists are pulling strings to get favorite pieces of legislation out of committee and into the House and Senate for votes.
About 150 correctional officers are demonstrating in front of Legislative Hall. They want action and they want it now.
They want a Senate bill that would give them more pay pulled from committee and sent to the floor for a vote.
Although state law prohibits the officers from striking, union members are threatening to call in sick or refuse to work overtime if they aren't granted some relief.
But this isn't 2004, when some 1,300 unionized correctional officers are trying to get the state to address low pay, inadequate staffing and a host of other issues.
It's the summer of 1979.
The parallels are remarkably similar to what's going on now.
While not officially endorsed by their union, correctional officers employed in 2004 have been refusing voluntary overtime for six weeks.
Rumblings of "blue flu'' and other tactics appear daily on a free-wheeling "correctional officers' forum'' Web site.
Looking back to '79
Most of the names and faces have changed since an earlier generation of officers pressed their case in 1979.
A few remain.
The Delaware State News reported that on June 27, 1979, the approximately 150 demonstrating correctional officers were met on the steps of Legislative Hall by Sen. Nancy W. Cook, D-Kenton, who told them "point blank'' that their bill — Senate Bill 293 — would never see the light of day.
The bill, sponsored by then-Sen. Thomas B. Sharp, D-Pinecrest, at the request of Prison Employees AFSCME Local 1726, promised officers an additional 5 percent pay hike on top of the 7 percent salary increase for all state workers included in the 1979-80 budget bill.
Sen. Cook, elected in 1974, stood firm. The measure died.
"Every state employee can come along and ask for the same thing,'' she told the officers. "I don't agree with the bill you put in that treats one group of state employees in a different way.''
Instead, Sen. Cook said the officers should take their message to the legislative Joint Finance Committee or what was then the state Personnel Commission.
She said those were the proper venues for the officers to seek job status upgrades with accompanying pay raises.
The officers said they had already done that.
According to the State News article, the officers voiced complaints of having to be unarmed in the presence of dangerous inmates, not being allowed lunch breaks and being subjected to abuse from prisoners.
Others complained of inadequate staffing and lack of training.
"The damned prisoners are better armed than we are and we can't even carry a pistol where I work,'' the paper quoted one unidentified officer.
Similarities abound
After initial endorsement, the Correctional Officer's Association of Delaware informed its members this year that it could not support formal labor protests such as mass overtime refusals.
The union urged rank-and-file to begin accepting voluntary overtime again but stressed each officer had the right to make his or her own "individual'' decision.
With few exceptions, the officers continued their protest, citing long-standing issues of dangerously inadequate staffing, low morale and skimpy salary levels.
Paul W. Howard is chief of the Bureau of Prisons for the Department of Correction.
He said recently that he is considering the employment of private security guards to help beef up DOC's court and transport unit, which has been hit hardest by voluntary overtime refusals.
In 1979, Mr. Howard was a correctional social worker and president of Prison Employees Local 1726.
When the 150 officers demonstrated at Legislative Hall and threatened formal protests, Mr. Howard told the State News he "would not, as union president, sanction a strike.''
Another union member, Peter Giglio, agreed.
"We will discuss other alternatives,'' Mr. Giglio said. "There's more than one way to skin a cat.''
Mr. Howard's voice was heard on salary matters, though.
"We can't live on a 7 percent increase,'' he told the Wilmington Morning News. "We need 12 percent.''
Past discussions
Sen. Cook said she recalled meeting the officers on the steps of Legislative Hall 25 years ago.
She said she still believes, as she did then, that salary structures for all classes of state workers should be handled through the state personnel department and the budgetary process.
She said she was well aware of the concerns correctional officers had in 1979.
With that in mind, she sponsored a concurrent resolution that June that formed an eight-member committee charged with reviewing pay and other issues for the officers.
"They were to report back to us in January with compensation recommendations,'' Sen. Cook said.
Mr. Howard represented the union on the 1979 committee. This year he is chairman of a similar, although larger, group of people being asked to consider ways of improving correctional officer recruitment and retention.
Language in the state's fiscal 2005 budget directs Gov. Ruth Ann Minner's administration to submit a report to the legislature by Nov. 15 containing recommendations on how to implement portions of a task force report issued last year. The report focuses on correctional officer compensation, benefits and pension issues.
Mr. Howard also chaired the task force.
Elizabeth Welch, a DOC spokeswoman, said Mr. Howard was on vacation Friday and declined to be interviewed for this article.
"He doesn't feel comfortable doing it,'' she said.
Instead, she said he would issue a prepared statement.
Low from ‘git-go'
Sen. James T. Vaughn, D-Clayton, was corrections commissioner in 1979.
He agreed there are similarities despite the passage of time.
"Back in those days a correctional officer only made just above $7,000 a year,'' he said. "I thought that was too low in some respects. I remember scrounging just to get them decent uniforms.''
Sen. Vaughn faulted the state merit system that he said "weights'' positions, awards points and assigns pay grades based on point totals.
"What I didn't like about it was that if one person worked in a job for 10 years and another came in at the same title, he'd get the same pay,'' Sen. Vaughn said.
"I went and talked to the DOC union. I told them they had to get out of the merit system because the only way to get a pay increase was through hazardous pay.''
Correctional officers received a $600 hazardous duty pay hike this year and have been promised an identical increase next year by Gov. Minner. The governor has also said she'll give officers a 5 percent salary increase in January.
Sen. Vaughn said more needs to be done.
"I think the state personnel office should take the lead and do a reclassification,'' he said.
"They can upgrade classes of employees. That's never been done with the correctional officers and I think it's past due. I think they put the correctional officers too far down from the git-go.
"The state police are not in the merit system. Maybe the correctional officers shouldn't be in it either. I think it's time to look at that.''
Cpl. Paul Smith, a veteran correctional officer assigned to the court and transport unit in New Castle County, helped orchestrate the six-week-long voluntary overtime protest this year.
"What happened back then really does parallel what's going on now,'' he said. "These are revolving issues. They been here for a long time.''
Post comments on this issue at newsblog.info/0407.
Senior writer Tom Eldred can be reached at 741-8212 or at teldred@newszap.com.
