Workers at three Arkansas prisons with the most severe staffing shortages received tentative approval Tuesday for a pay boost on top of one they already received this summer.
Members of a legislative personnel subcommittee voted to increase hazardous duty pay for 801 positions at the Cummins Unit, East Arkansas Regional Unit and Varner Unit after hearing from prison officials who said workers there dealt with some of the toughest prisoners, such as those on death row.
The pay raise -- if granted final approval by the Legislative Council -- will give security workers at those prisons an extra 20 percent of their base salary through two incentives called "differentials."
Under a pay plan that raised state workers' salaries starting in July, all correctional officers received a hazardous duty differential equal to 6 percent of their salaries. Officers at maximum security prisons got an additional 6 percent differential on top of the hazardous duty differential.
Under the department's most recent request presented Tuesday, officers at the three targeted prisons would see both differentials raised to 10 percent of their salaries.
For example, an entry-level correctional officer earning a $29,046 annual salary at the Varner Unit would get $5,809 each year in differential pay, or $2,324 more than officers of a similar rank at other prisons.
The Department of Correction said part of the added incentive was to boost pay for officers working in the prisons' highest-security levels: administrative segregation, punitive isolation and death row.
Arkansas' death row is in a cell block of the Varner Supermax prison, but not all inmates in the block have death sentences. The state's other maximum security unit, in Tucker, also has segregation and isolation housing.
An assessment by the Department of Finance and Administration pegged the total cost of both pay raises at $1,472,540 for the rest of this fiscal year, which began July 1.
Prisons spokesman Solomon Graves said the pay raises are part of the state prison system's efforts to fill its large shortage of security positions.
A total of 472 security positions were vacant across Arkansas prisons as of Monday, or more than 13 percent of the department's total budgeted force. Graves said shortages were identified as the worst at Varner, Cummins and East Arkansas.
Department of Correction Director Wendy Kelley told another legislative committee Monday that the new pay plan, in addition to the added hazard duty pay, would make it easier for the department to fill vacancies and retain employees.
"I see this as an attempt to go back and take care of some of the employees that got looked over in the payment plan," said state Rep. Kim Hammer, R-Benton, a member of the personnel subcommittee. "Their long-term service to the state is not being thrown to the curb."
Speaking to reporters after the subcommittee meeting, Graves said prison officials had been discussing the pay raises since spring, and the request was not a reaction to violent incidents at the Maximum Security Unit at Tucker in recent weeks.
The Maximum Security Unit is not one of the three where guards are eligible for a pay boost. But Graves said staff at other units have had to work overtime shifts at those three prisons to keep up minimum staffing levels.
Graves said the department will work with the governor's office and state officials if it determines pay raises at additional units are necessary.
Metro on 08/16/2017