MADISON — State prison and health workers in Wisconsin continue to rack up big bucks in overtime, with more than 160 of them getting a salary boost of $25,000 or more in overtime over 2010, according to a Wisconsin Reporter analysis of state payroll data.
Two of those workers earned a whopping six figures in overtime — overtime that alone amounts to about double the median household income in the state.
And one state worker got enough overtime to make the list of the 10 highest paid employees in the state at nearly $365,000 in total pay.
Despite a decrease in overall overtime spending in the taxpayer-funded Wisconsin state work force since the Legislative Audit Bureau reviewed state agencies’ use of overtime in 2008, overtime remains a reliable payday for many state workers. The LAB is scheduled to release a follow-up audit this spring.
The state paid employees almost $52.8 million for overtime in 2010 — the equivalent of 1,200 workers making the average state salary.
To put it another way, Wisconsin’s overtime tab is about the same as the budget as the state’s Environmental Improvement Program, which pays for wastewater facility construction and cleaning up contaminated lands.
Wisconsin paid $66.5 million in overtime in 2008, a goody basket that has decreased about 21 percent when compared to this year, according to the state database.
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Audit: generous union contract provisions contribute to big overtime bills
A 2008 state audit puts much of the blame for state workers’ ability to rack up big overtime on the generous overtime provisions in state employee union contracts.
Those provisions allow, for example, employees to include vacation time or sick leave toward their 40-hour work weeks, allowing them to accrue overtime payments even if they don’t actually work a full 40 hours.
And seniority provisions also ensure that, in the case of voluntary overtime, higher-paid senior employees are offered overtime opportunities before their lower-paid, junior counterparts.
Indeed, the audit notes that of the state employees making more than $100,000 a year in overtime, the majority were in supervisory positions.
“There are agencies where they run up a fair amount of overtime, and it appears that there are some people who sort of do that to maximize compensation,” said Todd Berry, president of the nonpartisan Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.
Virtually all of the top overtime earners worked for the Department of Corrections or the Department of Health Services, according to the data. The six-figure overtime earners were Health Services nurse clinician Sheryl Lee Fors and correctional Sgt. Jose Murray, who has since retired.
Neither returned calls seeking comment.
The two agencies have long been responsible for the bulk of the state’s overtime pay, though each has decreased those costs in recent years.
Both departments have cited their 24-hour facilities as the major reason for using overtime, some of which is mandatory, according to a report by the Legislative Audit Bureau.
“Part of the reason is that we’re a 24-hour operation,” said Tim Le Monds, Corrections spokesman. “Prisons stay open. They don’t close.”
DHS spokeswoman Beth Kaplan said the agency’s overtime is “consistent” with other facilities that operate around the clock.
“Due to the need to ensure adequate staffing levels at our seven institutions, overtime in such environments is appropriate and necessary,” Kaplan said via email. “In many instances, given the unanticipated nature of staffing needs, overtime is more effective and cost-efficient than overstaffing.”
As corrections institutions close down and those workers are moved to other facilities, increasing staffing levels there, overtime should be less necessary, said Ronald Keenan, Department of Corrections sergeant at the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility.
He also is president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 104.
Overtime also isn’t a cut-and-dried issue, he said.
“One claim is that … it is cheaper because it’s not pay plus benefits to employees, so it depends how senior your staff is compared to base wages plus benefits,” Keenan said.
The use of overtime is common in both the health and correctional fields, but can increase risk for on-the-job sloppiness, according to some experts and union officials. Indeed, one report showed that excessive overtime is bad for workers’ hearts.
And the 2008 state audit raised serious questions about overtime in fields that provide care or security and “their ability to effectively perform their responsibilities and not endanger patients, inmates, themselves and other employees.”
A spokesman for the Department of Corrections acknowledged that working too many hours could adversely affect an employee’s ability to perform his job.
“Certainly, any time any employee can’t perform their duties due to how many hours they work is a concern to any of us. And in those instances, it’s something we would want to take a look at,” said Tim LeFave, assistant administrator for the corrections department’s division of management services.
Some state prison facilities limit the number of hours employees can work per week, but LeFave said he wasn’t aware of any ceiling for overtime hours. In some cases, he said, the department may not be able to impose such limits on employees at all.
“Depending on local contracts, the institution (or) the department may or may not have much say in the issue,” he said.
Walker’s move to eliminate collective bargaining could curtail costs
That’s because some employees’ overtime procedures are written into their specific collective bargaining agreements. Pending the outcome of Gov. Scott Walker’s union reform law, currently stalled in court, that could change.
If implemented, Walker’s law, which eliminates collective-bargaining powers, except for salary, for most of the state’s public union employees, should help, said Chris Schneider, a senior fellow with free-market think tank Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.
But Schneider said it’s up to individual managers to help control overtime costs.
“I don’t think there’s anybody who’s sitting over at the Department of Administration who can handle looking over everybody’s time cards,” he said.
Still, the Department of Corrections has managed to reduce overtime costs during the past two years. In 2008, the department spent $33.4 million on premium overtime payments, paid out at time-and-a-half; last year, that number was almost $30 million, a decrease of about 10 percent.
LeFave said there were a multitude of reasons for the change, including improved day-to-day time management and an influx of full-time employees designed to drive down costs. The employees were funneled to institutions with high overtime numbers, LeFave said.
But the solution to the problem isn’t as simple as hiring more staff members to work at a regular hourly wage, LeFave added.
“We cannot just go out and hire people unless we’ve been allocated … budget authority to hire permanent positions,” he said.
Kate Elizabeth Queram and Kirsten Adshead cover Wisconsin politics and public policy for WisconsinReporter.com. Jackie Clews contributed to this report.
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