Council 31 Puts Shackles on New Prison Director
More than 2,500 COs from several AFSCME locals in Illinois joined with the top leadership of Council 31 Sept. 16 to protest understaffing and security concerns within the state’s Department of Corrections.
The target of AFSCME’s demonstration is Donald Snyder, the state’s new prisons director. Joe Bella, Council 31 regional director, says there have been other statewide pickets by COs in the past, but “this is by far the one that’s generated the most participation ever.” COs demonstrated at 30 correctional facilities located all over Illinois.
Snyder took control of the prisons in January 1999. In his brief stint at the helm, Bella states the new prisons’ chief has “more than doubled the number of administrative staff. He’s put into place a number of people who have little or no experience dealing in the front line of corrections. There are a lot of political appointees — political friends of his.”
Bella says that Snyder also has “engaged in a campaign to make sure that facilities have shiny floors.” There are reports that prison officials ordered COs to paint a facility in Jacksonville. An administrator didn’t like the color scheme and directed them to repaint the building.
The message from the picket was clear to Snyder: change priorities, fill vacant staff positions and increase the number of staff working the front line, and upgrade the security systems of the prisons.
Snyder controls a $1 billion annual budget for the Department of Corrections. “I think it’s frustrating for the front-line officers to see sergeant’s positions go unfilled, yet they see a new deputy director almost every day come to the facility with a brand new staff car. They don’t see how that’s going to translate into enhancing security on the front line.” Bella argues. “Instead of spending more money on administrators, and new cars and office space for them, he should be spending money on walls and enforced security systems inside the prison.
The picket worked. “A week after the picket, [Snyder] saw fit to issue a press release largely in defense of his administration, which clearly shows this guy’s on the defensive.”
Council 31 leaders have been insisting Snyder meet with them and discuss understaffing and improved security. “We’ve been asking for a joint labor/management meeting since June, and he’s been dodging us,” says Bella. “He finally, at the end of September, confirmed a December date. So our next step right now is to meet with him in December and raise these issues, and see if he will, in fact, address them.”
