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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Union Wants Arbitrator To Decide Prison Staffing Dispute


Associated Press
      SANTA FE — The state's corrections officers union wants an arbitrator to decide whether New Mexico's prisons should hire more employees or pay current staff overtime to alleviate alleged staffing problems.
    Lee Ortega, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees' local chapter that represents corrections workers, sent the arbitration request to the state Corrections Department on Monday.
    Ortega said an inmate stabbed a corrections officer at the state Penitentiary last week. He said such attacks aren't uncommon because the department isn't staffing prisons adequately.
    "This is a safety thing," Ortega said. "We're trying to get them to staff it properly."
    Ortega said the number of corrections officers monitoring 300 maximum-security inmates at the Penitentiary has dropped from 18 to six.
    Corrections Department spokeswoman Tia Bland disputed the claim, saying there were 286 inmates at the lockup as of Tuesday and it's mandatory that the department have a minimum of 20 officers working during the day and a comparable number at night.
    The union previously filed three grievances against the department. Ortega's letter said the department met with union representatives but hasn't responded to the grievances.
    But Bland said the union expressed general concerns about how the department assigns officers to various posts and the department is waiting for more specifics from the union.
    "Correctional officer recruitment and retention continue to be top priorities for this administration," Bland said. "We will continue to maximize our resources on a daily basis to cover mandatory posts."

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