Maryland owes $13M to correctional workers who were underpaid for years

Maryland’s state government will pay out more than $13 million to thousands of correctional officers and prison workers who were cheated out of their pay for years.

The settlement, which was approved Wednesday, covers nearly 3,900 workers over a three-year span from 2018 through 2021, but the employee union believes the wage theft was more extensive and may also have happened at other state agencies.

“This issue was raised time and again at the departmental level, at the local level, and our members were told repeatedly that there was no problem. ... They were lied to by the department,” said Patrick Moran, president of AFSCME Council 3, which represents correctional employees. “Individuals in management had to plan, had to authorize and execute this plan. It was not a computer glitch because it happened in every single institution in this state.”

According to Moran, workers at state-run prisons and jails were being cheated both at the beginning and end of their shifts for years.

For example, workers would clock in ahead of their scheduled shift in order to get to their post on time, but were not paid for those several minutes in between. The same thing happened at the end of shifts, when workers would have to stay over in their posts waiting for their replacements to arrive.

The state uses biometric scanners for workers to clock into and out of work, so the time cards and paychecks can be precise to the minute, Moran said. Instead, workers’ time was being rounded up or rounded down to shave off time — and pay — from their records, he said.

After complaints from workers went unheeded, the union got the U.S. Department of Labor involved. That agency opened an investigation at the Jessup Correctional Institution and found workers there were shortchanged by about $468,000 over a two-year period between 2018 and 2020.

The investigation then expanded to other state-run prisons and jails, leading to this week’s multimillion-dollar settlement, which was approved by the state Board of Public Works on Wednesday. Every single state-run correctional facility is covered by the settlement, including state prisons and Baltimore City’s jail and Central Booking facilities.

The wage theft took place during the administration of former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican whose two terms in office ended in January.

Officials with the U.S. Department of Labor declined to comment, saying their investigation is still open.

Gov. Wes Moore said his team would continue to cooperate with federal labor officials on the investigation, and pledged to ensure it wouldn’t happen again.

Correctional officials are currently reviewing the time records of dietary officers, maintenance officers and supply workers to see if they are owed back wages, wrote Carolyn J. Scruggs, the state’s secretary of public safety, in a letter to the Board of Public Works.

Moore and other state officials apologized to the workers who lost out on pay they had earned for years.

“Thousands of dedicated and hard-working employees were underpaid for hours of work they performed at their department,” said Moore, a Democrat. “And we not only owe them this long-overdue back pay, frankly, we owe them an apology for having either inadequate time-keeping systems or inappropriate policies in place.”

“I also want to apologize on behalf of the state that this happened, and let our workers know how unacceptable this practice was,” said Comptroller Brooke Lierman, a Democrat. “It was a blatant violation of the long-established Fair Labor Standards Act and trained professionals should have, and did, know better.”

The state employee union, while celebrating the payment, wants further digging into the matter. Moran said that high-ranking officials in state government had to have known about the wage theft, and he wants them held accountable.

“There are individuals that were clearly involved in this. They clearly manufactured this, they executed it, they oversaw it. But it had to be more than one person, because it happened at every single institution,” Moran said in an interview.

The AFSCME union is investigating whether similar theft has happened at other state agencies, particularly ones where state workers provide round-the-clock services.

“If there are people still working here in the state that were responsible for this or had a hand in this, they should be shown the door,” Moran said.

Moore put $15 million into the state budget in anticipation of the case being settled.

Hogan also had anticipated a potential settlement, putting $30 million in his final budget to pay for a combination of salary overruns and a potential settlement of the correctional officer pay investigation. When there was no settlement last year, the money rolled back into the state’s general fund.

pamela.wood@thebaltimorebanner.com

Pamela Wood

pamela.wood@thebaltimorebanner.com

Pamela Wood covers Maryland politics and government. She previously reported for The Baltimore Sun, The Capital and other Maryland newspapers. A graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, she lives in northern Anne Arundel County.

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