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Saturday, May 29, 2004
State prison guards win $7 million in back pay
State prison guards will collect $7.27 million from the Department of Corrections, which for years has not paid them for the few minutes they spend before each shift debriefing their colleagues going off duty.
More than 1,850 corrections officers will get paid for nine minutes of overtime for each shift worked over the past four years under the terms of a preliminary settlement reached last week in a class-action lawsuit being heard in Pierce County Superior Court.
The $2.88 per shift that will be paid to each corrections officer adds up handsomely. Multiplied over four years, they will be getting a check for about $2,500 each, said attorney Lynn Ellsworth, who filed the suit for named plaintiffs Robert Stamey and Marshall Kirkpatrick.
Ellsworth said the corrections officers arrive a few minutes before their shifts, begin to pick up equipment, get instructions and debrief the officer they are relieving on what has been happening with the prisoners.
Assistant Attorney General Stewart Johnston, who represented the Corrections Department in the suit, said that although the department did not admit liability or wrongdoing, the settlement precludes exposure to a significantly larger payout.
That's because if the guards could prove to the court that the department willfully chose not to pay the wages, the damages could be doubled.
In a three-way mediation session involving the department, the corrections officers and Teamsters Local 117, which represents the officers, an agreement was reached to restructure the shifts to prevent future suits, Johnston said.
Last month, Ellsworth filed a new suit seeking class-action status for corrections sergeants and lieutenants on the same grounds.
Although the suit has yet to be certified as a class action, Johnston said that potential exposure should be less because the number of people involved is in the hundreds.
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