By Janelle Stecklein
McAlester News-Capital
OKLAHOMA CITY — A pay raise will do little to attract and keep correctional officers in understaffed state prisons, the director of a professional group said.
Starting July 1, correctional officers will see a 6.25 or 8 percent pay boost, depending upon their job description. Legislators included the raises in the budget for the coming fiscal year.
While grateful, Sean Wallace, executive director of the Oklahoma Corrections Professionals, said he doubts a raise that amounts to less than a dollar an hour for most employees will affect hiring.
The prisons are short hundreds of guards, he said, and an 8 percent raise isn’t going to be enough incentive. In addition to boosting the pay of existing correction officers, the state will be increasing the
starting pay from $11.83 an hour to $12.78.
“We hope it will make a difference, but we really don’t see it making much of a difference recruiting-wise,” said Wallace, whose organization represents correctional officers.
The group had asked for an 18 percent raise and lifting the starting wage of a correctional officer to at least $14 per hour, he said.
State officials hope the raise makes it easier to hire and retain correctional officers, said Department of Corrections spokesman Jerry Massie, but it’s too soon to tell.
“It’s one of the things we’ve asked for in the past,” Massie said. “We recognize what they were getting paid before is an issue that made it difficult to recruit and retain them.”
The state only has enough guards to meet about 60 percent of its need, said Massie. He said the state is authorized by statute to have 2,583 corrections officers, but only has the funding for about 1,750 — about 68 percent — of authorized posts.
The median pay for state corrections officers is about $29,000, Wallace said. That does not include additional incentive benefits such as health insurance and a state pension plan.
Those shortages make recruiting difficult, said Wallace. For years, guards have been required to work 60-hour weeks because of lack of staff.
“We want to get away from 60-hour work weeks, and I don’t think that kind of pay raise is going to get us there,” he said. “I think they (legislators) did the best they could with the money they had, but I think there are still a lot of questions.”
One of those questions is why 600 corrections employees — including secretarial, food service and maintenance staff inside prisons — are excluded from the raise, he said.
“There’s a lot of upset people,” he said, noting that such a move is divisive among staff who rely on each other in an already tough work environment.
Legislators faced a tight budget year and grappled with a more than $180 million budget shortfall. Their budget ultimately cut money for 52 state agencies.
But thousands of employees also identified as among the lowest paid were awarded similar raises as correctional officers. They included troopers; employees of the Departments of Human Services; staff in the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse; as well as those working in various law enforcement roles for the state.
House Minority Leader Scott Inman, D-Del City, both praised and criticized the raises. He said the pay boost only benefits about 1 in 10 of the state’s 80,000 employees.
While a raise “is sorely overdue” considering that most employees haven’t had one in nearly eight years, he said, it’s not enough to pay for cost-of-living adjustments or inflation.
“So while it’s good that they get some additional money because these folks are working for peanuts and need it, at the end of the day to go around and say we gave them a 6 percent raise on paper, it sounds good,” said Inman. “But when you look at it and they haven’t had any for the last eight years, it’s pretty inconsequential.”