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CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRESS ROOM | |
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| Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 54 Dore Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 | Tel: (415) 621-5661 | Fax: (415) 621-5466 |
California's efforts to reform its dysfunctional corrections system will fail unless the state negotiates a more reasonable contract with the prison guards. The new contract should end the guards' run of dictating prison policy and blocking reform.
The California Correctional Peace Officers Association's five-year contract with the state expired last month, and negotiations are under way on a new deal. The state's proposal for a new pact would eliminate some of the worst abuses of the old contract.
State negotiators, for example, want to drop the provision that lets guards count sick leave as time worked in tallying overtime. In what private-sector job could employees miss a day because of illness and still count that day toward earning overtime?
But other proposals cut to the core issue of who runs the prisons. State negotiators want to revise the contract provision that allows the union to decide 70 percent of personnel assignments, while management has control over a mere 30 percent.
That arrangement is nonsense. Managers should make assignments on the basis of skills and qualifications, not on seniority or union politics.
The old contract goes even further in giving the union undue power. The state wants to adjust a provision that lets the union negotiate over any change in policy or operations not covered by the contract if the change affects "the working condition of a significant number of employees." That provision gives the union power to delay or block almost any change it opposes.
No wonder the pace of reform moves so slowly. The Independent Review Panel on Corrections, headed by former Gov. George Deukmejian, found in 2004 that the guards' contract provisions "seriously undermine the ability of management" to run the prisons. Court-appointed special master John Hagar echoed that sentiment in June, when he charged that corrections' top managers didn't know who was in charge: "the acting (corrections) secretary or the president of the CCPOA."
This year's elections complicate the contract negotiations with the politically powerful guards union. But taxpayers have too much riding on a functioning prison system for state negotiators to do anything but stand firm.
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