DOC Working to Ensure Public Safety Employees Receive Proper Overtime

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                     May 30, 2008

 

OLYMPIA – The Department of Corrections (DOC) is reviewing the hours its community corrections officers (CCOs) have worked in recent years to ensure they received fair overtime pay for their irregular hours spent supervising offenders in the community.

The review was prompted by an audit and possible litigation by the  federal Department of Labor (DOL). DOC has been working with DOL to determine whether CCOs have worked overtime and whether the Corrections’ time keeping system – used by most of state government – fails to comply with the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The lawsuit could be filed next week.

“Under my leadership DOC will never compromise public safety by refusing to compensate its CCOs for going wherever they have to go at any hour of the day or night to supervise offenders and hold them accountable,” said Karen Daniels, DOC’s assistant secretary for Community Corrections.

“We are emphasizing to the DOL that CCOs often work irregular schedules so they can make unannounced visits at the homes of people on their case loads, get them to treatment programs, transport them to jails or prisons at night or on weekends and do other work that doesn’t fit within 8-5 schedules,” she added. “Those irregular hours make tracking working hours more difficult.”

“Our CCOs are committed to protecting public safety and we are committed to paying them for it,” Daniels said. “At the same time, we are committed to being good stewards of the taxpayers’ money.”

Daniels said DOC has been working with the DOL since April, 2007, when the federal government began an audit to see if the CCOs were being paid in accordance with FLSA.

Assistant Attorney General Kara Larsen said the DOL has to file its lawsuit next week because the DOC’s agreement tolling the statute of limitations is about to expire.

“We are cooperating in the federal audit and we are negotiating with DOL in good faith to determine if anyone failed to receive the overtime pay he or she deserved,” Larsen said.

Daniels said DOC is in the process of changing its time-keeping system. In the past employees accounted for their time by completing leave slips when they were absent from work or submitting overtime requests for working more than 40 hours.

In the future the employees will turn in time slips recording the hours they work each day.


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