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Executive Director Brian Olsen
AFSCME/CEC 7

On March 12th 2009 AFSCME/CEC7 had an official membership Lobby Day and TDCJ Memorial, at the State Capitol. It was a very successful day starting at 9am at the Texas AFL-CIO Auditorium for a Legislative briefing with coffee and doughnuts. We had standing room only, with in depth information on all the Bills we are supporting. Council 7 President Ray Stewart introduced the state Executive Board Members and thanked all TDCJ employees for taking their time to fight for their futures, he stated, "this is what it takes, a commitment by employees to stand for what is right." We then heard from Executive Director Brian E. Olsen, Political Action Director Dee Simpson and AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson, (Retired). The members then went to the Capitol to get our bills and our voices heard. Over 500 correctional employees attended and showed the Legislature "We Will Be Heard", and they were, resoundingly. They were professional at all times and showed they had indeed deserve Professional Respect. Every single politician in the Capitol (181) was seen by correctional officers. We were told later the politicians were very impressed by the numbers and professional attitude. This will go a long way in getting our agenda heard. These are the bills we are following. It must be noted there are many corrections bills but these are the ones we co-sponsored affecting employees.

  1. HB 137 - Gonzales Toureilles relating to Comp-time on the books being rolled into sick time if not used.
  2. HB 138 - Gonzales Toureilles relating for an extension in the career ladder for a CO6 position.
  3. HB 479 - Heflin relating to an additional sick leave for CO's who work overtime.
  4. HB 518 - Kolkhorst relating to Tuition Reimbursement for CO's.
  5. HB 2269 - Alonzo relating to certain personnel policies of TDCJ.
  6. HB 3497 - Miller relating to our Career Ladder for Non-uniform security, Maintenance, Industry, Ag, Drivers.
  7. HB 1914 - McReynolds relating to Abolishing Private Prison Labor Industry Operation.
  8. HB 933 - Dutton relating to Liability of a government for a death caused by unit negligence.
  9. SB 2309 - Whitire relating to certain Personnel policy of TDCJ.
  10. HB 3106 - Madden relating to amount of Hazardous Duty Pay for certain TDCJ employees.
  11. HB 3605 - Frost relating to personnel policies of TDCJ.

Stay tuned for more information. It must be noted by the time this gets out it will be out dated so please continue to get to cec7.org or call 1-800-374-9772 for updates. Your locals should have the weekly updates.

Letter to the Editor

"I was very disturbed, and very disappointed that Governor Perry vetoed HB 2103 (Kolkhorst), corrections employee tuition reimbursement. This bill had virtually no fiscal note, and would have done so much for the morale of an agency suffering a huge turnover rate, primarily due to being 47th in pay nation wide, and continually put on the back burner by the legislature. This was a visionary bill that looked 'outside the box', by Rep. Lois Kolkhorst. This bill would have helped this agency develop the 'managers of the future' for TDCJ. This bill was a pilot program that if it worked would have expanded to other state universities. Thanks to Rep. Kolkhorst for thinking of these hard working Texans, and shame on Governor Perry for his thoughtlessness and being out of touch."

Brian E. Olsen
1-936-661-4610

Over Time Banking Gone

Because of our testimony on SB 909 and HB2053, sunset bill, TDCJ will never be able to force Banking of overtime again. How did this happen? During my testimony on HB 2053 I stated that we were concerned about negotiations with TDCJ and we wanted more teeth in those negotiations. To ensure situations like the banked overtime never coming back. We had negotiated to stop the banking just before the 80th legislature began, but I was worried that it could be re-implemented again after the session was over. We felt TDCJ may intentionally have changed this policy to avoid us filing a bill to stop the Overtime banking. I did not want overtime to ever come back. During my testimony I brought up the possibility that overtime banking could come back, Rep. Haggerty El Paso, was out raged at all the unfounded overtime amendment on our behalf to make it a state statuette on SB 909, that it can never be re-implemented ever. Done deal. We were very pleased Rep. Haggerty stepped up to help all TDCJ staff that have or will work overtime, and I thank him. That being said what do we do about this overtime on the books? We have come up with what we think could work.

  1. pay out banked overtime, the legislature did not fund this. This leads us to either managing the current Overtime money to hopefully have surplus at the end of the fiscal year to possibly pay some banked overtime. This may or may not happen, if not we will file a bill in the next session to get this over time funded.
  2. keep overtime on the books till leaving the agency. They would have to pay the overtime when leaving at the pay grade level when you leave.
  3. keep it on the books and use it as time off, we will see what we can do to get the funding done. Stay tuned.

Texas Sunset Commission

Testimony of Brian Olsen, Executive Director of AFSCME Corrections Council 7, before the Texas Sunset Commission. Nov 14, 2006

Mr. Chairman, Ms Vice Chairwoman and Members,

I am Brian Olsen and I am the Executive Director of the Correctional Employees Council headquartered in Huntsville. We are a union of employees of the TDCJ and those institutions associated with the Correctional Managed Healthcare Committee, Texas Tech Medical School and UTMB. We are affiliated with the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees in the AFL-CIO.

We have been representing these employees since the mid 90's. Everyday we talk to the employees about what is going on in the prisons. And every session we come here and try to forge solutions to the many problems facing the employees of the Texas prison system. One thing I have learned is the problems, which face the prison system, are all bound up together like a ball because of its nature, the prison system is a closed system.

One problem that sits in the middle of your good efforts here is the stability of your workforce of 39,000 employees, especially those who work directly in the prisons. Looking around this table I see some folks who have worked closely with us in trying to address this and related problems over the years. They know we have focused much of our efforts here trying to address TDCJ's chronic high employee turnover. Turnover does not happen in a vacuum. It happens when working conditions are bad, pay is low, and prison administration is so strapped that it cannot professionalize its workforce. All those things happen when the prisons are overcrowed and underfinanced.

And in that light I would like to say that this Sunset Report addresses some of the fundamental problems facing TDCJ: prison over-crowding, better planning, more legislative accountability, and recognizing that we are putting too many people in the prison system and many stay too long. It is not our job to tell the Legislature who should be in prison and who shouldn't. However, in this forum, we would be remiss if I didn't tell you that our members know that too many of the wrong people are in our prisons. So, I think the vast majority of our members would agree with you that finding the proper role within the criminal justice system for the prisons is paramount in your work. It should not be the dumping ground for all the other problems we as a state cannot afford to fix.

We don't have the facilities or the employees or the programs to handle the current system. So we support the sections of this report that emphasize diversion programs, community supervision, and drug and alcohol rehabilitation for non-violent offenders.

We support putting more money into programs that will reduce prison population to those who need to be removed from society for serious violations. We know if successful this will harden the prison population while it reduces overcrowding. We ask this committee to consider this reality and recognize this in any legislation that will result from this work.

How bad is the problem of turnover? Since we started representing TDCJ employees, we have signed over 15,000 employees to become members of our union. Of those perhaps 4000 still work for the agency. Thirteen hundred of those signed last year alone and well over a thousand this year so far. That means more are quitting. Last time we looked the TDCJ employees last an average of about 2 1/2 years. The average turnover rate in a state prison system in the United States is about 13 or 14%. Though we don't have the official numbers, you got to figure that our turnover rate is between 22 and 25% annually at least.

An unstable workforce in a difficult and dangerous environment is the last thing the State of Texas needs when dealing with hardened criminals. This work calls for more than warehousing of offenders. Keeping inventory is what we are paid for; we do a lot more. And we do it for long hours, more than the 40 hours a week most Americans work. We do it with varying degrees of efficiency and competency depending upon all kinds of issues some of which are addressed in this report. This problem in the past has been addressed as a "recruitment" problem by the Agency. They are bailing water so fast; trying to improve the quality of the bucket brigade is hard for them to focus on.

How important is legislative oversight?
Specifically, we support the creation of a Legislative Oversight Board not only because we don't think the Legislature has enough information to manage the policies of the TDCJ as stipulated in this report, but because the prison system has to change and only the legislature is going to force that.

We hope that some of our concerns will be specifically addressed under this section as a way of finally correcting the massive problems and inefficiences created with the hodgepodge of policies and under funded budgets, which has TDCJ leading the big states and most small ones in employee turnover.

The price for this is turnover, but higher recidivism, higher prison violence, more prisoner mistreatment, and on and on. The answer is to prefessionalize this workforce and pay it accordingly. In short, give these employees some respect for what they are being asked to do. We pay them 50% less or more than competively sized systems. We don't solicit their opinions and we don't give them substantial redress of grievances in a work environment that is all about the aggrieved.

So we would like to propose that this legislation and the appropriation bill address the problems that lead to the management by triage, and unhappy employees who see this work as temporary.

Here is why: There is no consistent commitment to professionalize this group of employees.
1) Low Pay
2) Mandatory Overtime and Comp time policies
3) Bad working conditions from over crowding and high turnover
4) Unfair promotional system controlled by wardens and not by professional standards.

The mandatory overtime problems fall disproportionately on the young people we recruit. When I read the report that the agency recruited over 6500 new recruits last year, I was not surprised that the agency didn't add: that most of them will be gone within a year and almost all of them within three to six years.

If employees see that they have a reasonable future then they will stay. It will cost up front money. It will require changes. It will require the legislature first and the agency both to make a consistent commitment to give their employees the professional respect this job requires. Rural Texas will be a different more prosperous more stable place to raise families, and our prison system might begin accomplishing more than we have been able to under these conditions.

During the 77th Legislature we worked with some members on this committee to pass Hb 3185 that addressed these issues with the intent of lowering turnover. Passing both houses unanimously the bill was tagged the Professional Respect Bill. Governor Perry vetoed it. The Governor said the bill's provisions were being addressed by the TDCJ. In fairness to the Governor and the ever-changing TDCJ management teams, some of these issues have been addressed by the TDCJ and the Legislature. But most of the problems remain. That is to say we are not here to complain about this report, the agency or the Legislature. We are here to say that we have been partners to slow progress, but we can't seem to make the moves to get enough water out of the boat to see how we will ever stop bailing water.

We appreciate the opportunity this report gives all of us in this partnership to put down our buckets and do the professional job Texans deserve.

Here are some steps that will make a difference.

We created a career ladder that is significant, but it remains under-funded. Texas continues to rank near or at the bottom in CO compensation. The solution is to recognize that TDCJ employees and Corrections Officers in particular are not really your average state employees with an average job. They should be taken out have the salary schedule A and B and put in one that emphasizes professional development, and not dependent upon the formulas the Legislature uses to compensate employees. We have to recognize that the problem won't go away. The career ladder needs to be revamped and funded to address professionalizing the corps of security personnel.

In the short run we need to fund overtime pay and in the long run eliminate the necessity for it. Right now the employees bear the burnt of this and the are speking with their feet.

We propose that the language be added to this bill reflecting the steps necessary to professionalize this workforce, that it specifically call for formalized consultation between the organizations which have met the standards for dues deduction and that those consultation meeting specifically focus on reducinf turnover. Moreover, the resilts of those meetings should be subject of the Legislative oversight in Recommendation #2

We would aslo like to encourage more transparency when it comes to the private prisons. Since the private prison lobby set up shop here in Texas they have succceeded in impairing fair and objective management of prison resources. They dirty little secret that is not really a secret is that their political influence was directly responsible for the elimination of Dr. Fabello's role in the agency. We are not saying there is not a role fore contractors in the prision system, but not the way it is now. They have too much political influence and they do much of their work poorly, while further hardening our population. Their role should be objectively assessed by the legislature and the way they do their work should be transparent to you and not hidden. Their tunrover rates are as much as four times what we experience and there is many more problems if the facts come out.

I will be glad to answer any of your questions and look forward to the good work that comprises this report being adopted and we also hope that when that is done, we don't forget the importance of our employees and their legitimate needs to be given the professional respect neccessary to keep them working for us.