By Hannah Gaskill
Baltimore Sun
JESSUP, Md. — Maryland correctional workers are to receive $10 million from the state, finalizing a settlement reached after a yearslong investigation into illegally withheld overtime pay for thousands of employees.
Employees at the state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services had already received $13 million in owed wages in July, bringing the settlement’s total to $23 million. The Maryland Board of Public Works approved the additional payment Wednesday.
Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat and the Board of Public Works chair, said Wednesday that he is “proud to report” that the state is “conclusively bringing this matter to a close with this payment to 5,424 current and former employees.”
The U.S. Department of Labor announced in February 2022 that employees at Maryland’s Jessup Correctional Institution were only being paid for their scheduled shifts rather than when they clocked in and out, in violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. The agency eventually expanded its investigation into timekeeping practices at all Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services facilities, finding that employees weren’t being given overtime wages because supervisors were not providing signed approval when the non-managerial staff worked beyond scheduled hours.
The wage theft occurred between November 2018 and August 2020 under former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration.
Correctional officers are represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, which has over one million members nationwide — 45,000 of whom work in Maryland. The union, which had an adversarial relationship with Hogan during his tenure, signed a new contract with the state last week.
AFSCME Council 3 President Patrick Moran told the board Wednesday that he had “never heard of” a settlement “this large” or a case of wage theft on behalf of state government “this insulting.”
Moran said that investigators for the U.S. Department of Labor found “such damning evidence of wage theft” under Hogan’s administration that it deemed the state owed three years of back pay to thousands of state workers — “the maximum federal penalty allowed.”
“Larry Hogan, his staff and [ Department of Public Safety ] leadership perpetrated this fraud and need to be held accountable,” he asserted. “There’s no one who’s been held accountable yet.”
Wednesday’s payment was due to an oversight on behalf of those involved in negotiating the settlement.
Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services Secretary Carolyn Scruggs said that the initial settlement only covered workers classified as “correctional officers.” The U.S. Department of Labor said they needed to compensate all employees with the word “correctional” in their job title, like correctional dietary officers and correctional maintenance officers, she said.
According to a news release from AFSCME Council 3, employees will be paid out based on how their hours were rounded up or down under the Hogan administration and when they clocked in and out.
Scruggs said that the department’s time-keeping system has been corrected “so that it no longer continues to round numbers and create the overtime concern that we had.” The agency has also established a new overtime policy, which AFSCME is reviewing.
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