Unions: State Workforce Shortages Leading to Dangerous Conditions

The shortage of 2,000 state employees in critical places like prisons and psychiatric hospitals is leading to unmanageable workloads and dangerous working conditions, members of the state’s largest employee union told lawmakers on Tuesday.

Jeremy Jeffers, a resident adviser at the Victor Cullen Center, a youth detention facility in Frederick County, said employees are drafted to work 16-hour shifts multiple times a week. On days when there isn’t enough staff to fully cover positions, Cullen Center residents don’t get classroom time and instead have school lessons dropped off without instruction. At the facility, Jeffers said he’s been assaulted multiple times, resulting in a partially amputated finger, several concussions, torn ligaments and a fractured ankle.

Rownite Stevens, a correctional officer at Eastern Correctional Institute in Westover, said an “extreme staffing shortage has dire consequences for the inmates who we are in charge of supervising.”

Medical appointments are delayed when there aren’t enough officers for escorts. Inmates are unsafe in the yard if there aren’t enough correctional officers to supervise. Stevens said a fight last week drew a large contingent of responding officers, leaving her and two other officers to supervise almost 400 inmates on their own.

Read more: https://www.marylandmatters.org/2019/10/30/unions-state-workforce-shortages-leading-to-dangerous-conditions/