By Phil Kabler
The Charleston Gazette
CHARLESTON, W. Va. — A legislative committee on Monday endorsed a multi-year pay increase package for Division of Corrections staffers — something that Commissioner Jim Rubenstein said would help address an “alarming” increase in employee turnover.
Rubenstein told members of the Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jails and Corrections that low salaries are the prime cause of the division’s 24 percent turnover rate and 11 percent staff vacancy rate for 2013-14.
He said that is forcing mandatory overtime, requiring moving correctional officers to facilities with severe staff shortages — and even having office staff working inside the prisons.
Rubenstein said all Corrections employees receive six weeks of basic training at the state Corrections Academy, and stressed that nonuniform employees are not assigned to critical positions in the prisons.
“When your shortages and vacancies reach the point where you’re requiring nonuniform personnel … it’s not a good situation,” he said. “It’s not ideal, and we won’t do that in every unit.”
Rubenstein said that when office staff is placed in prison facilities, it is in comparatively low-risk assignments.
“We won’t put nonuniformed staff in real critical posts,” he said. “We can have somebody stand a post counting inmates going into the dining area.”
Rubenstein said a major issue is that Division of Corrections salaries are not competitive.
He noted that a correctional officer in the state prison system starts at $22,584, and is assured of only one raise, coming after one year of service.
By contrast, a corrections officer in a federal prison starts and $39,012, and most state correctional officers qualify to work in the federal system once they have three years’ experience.
Likewise, parole officers in the Corrections system start at $24,912, while probation officers — who have roughly the same qualifications and job requirements, but are employees of the state Supreme Court — start at $36,264.
“I think that an argument could be made that parole officers have a little tougher row to hoe, and are paid one-third less,” said Sen. Bill Laird, D-Fayette, noting that all parolees have served time in prison, while many probationers are given those sentences in lieu of prison time for less severe crimes.
The division’s recruitment and retention proposal, endorsed Monday by the committee, calls for:
• A $2,000 across-the-board salary increase for all current employees. Total cost, including equal raises for Regional Jail, and Juvenile Services Division staff, $10.2 million for one year.
• Increasing starting salaries by $2,000. Cost: $10.2 million a year.
• Longevity pay increases. Automatic promotions and pay increases for the first five years for employees in good standing, followed by promotions every third year. Cost: $11 million over the first three years.
Rubenstein said that in exit interviews, employees have said they would have stayed in the state system, if they had a glimmer of hope for future pay increases.
“One of the things we hear again and again, as they look at the federal system or other job opportunities, is that they know there are built-in pay increases they know they’re going to get,” he said.
Rubenstein said he has presented the pay package proposal to Military Affairs and Public Safety Secretary Joe Thornton and to the governor’s office, but could not say if the governor will include the pay package in his legislative proposals.