Yesterday, July 23rd, 2019, AFSCME Maryland leaders met with Secretary Green for the Annual Staffing Meeting required by our union contract. AFSCME Maryland President Patrick Moran was joined by AFSCME Local 1678 President Patrick Okafor (Jessup Correctional Institutions), AFSCME Local 898 President Jeff Grabenstein (Western Correctional Institution Employees), AFSCME Local 3478 President Rownite Stevens (Eastern Correctional Institute), AFSCME Local 1427 President Dorian Johnson (Baltimore City Correctional Institutions Employees), AFSCME Local 1319 President Sam Olowookere (Patuxent Institution Employees) and AFSCME Local 3661 President Anthony Washington (Parole and Probation Employees).
Despite this meeting being scheduled for over 3 months and receiving a Freedom of Information Act request about staffing data over 3 months ago, management arrived with no data to discuss and the Secretary left the meeting without hearing a single Officer speak.
According to the latest report from the Department of Legislative Services, the Department is at well over 1,000 vacancies. Approximately half (46%) of these positions have been vacant for over 12 months. As of 12/31/18, the Department had 1,268 vacancies. Through “internal personnel transfers among the units within DPSCS,” the Department suddenly had a net decrease of 61 positions for the close of the fiscal year.
The only number Secretary Green came to the Annual Staffing Meeting with is that his goal is to hire 500 officers by increasing the number of single day recruitment events although he did not provide a list of dates for these events. The Secretary reported only 127 hires as of July 23rd, 2019. He reported that this number did not exceed the number of officers leaving or retiring. His staff could not provide details on a further breakdown of the goal number of hires per quarter or additional measures planned or in process to hire the additional 373 officers needed to meet the goal in the remaining 5 months of 2019.
DPSCS has no plan and doesn’t care about employees or inmates.
Join us on August 7th to hear directly from Officers on how the lack of staffing impacts them and what our plan is to raise wages so we can start to seriously address the fight to recruit and retain quality staff.
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