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The Board of Public Works Wednesday unanimously approved a nearly $9.5 million payout to settle wage theft claims for some current and former members of the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.
The investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor covered three years under former Gov. Larry Hogan (R). Nearly 10,000 employees, including more than 5,000 in the latest payout, fell victim to a scheme where work hours were rounded to the benefit of the department.
“Since day one, the Moore-Miller administration has been committed to working with our partners at AFSCME to bring this investigation, which has spanned years, to a conclusion as quickly as possible,” Gov. Wes Moore (D) said at the BPW meeting, referring to the state’s public employee union.
Carolyn J. Scruggs, secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, said the agency has also taken steps to ensure employees are paid for the hours they work.
“We have since corrected the system so that it no longer continues to round,” said Scruggs, adding that the agency has also developed a new overtime policy.
Moore declared the investigation over.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Labor, which handled the investigation, has declined to comment citing the open nature of the review.
The payout approved Wednesday is the second in less than a year related to an investigation by the federal government into allegations that the corrections department rounded the start and end times of workers’ shifts.
In July, the three-member Board of Public Works approved a $13 million payment to resolve some allegations of wage theft dating back to Hogan’s administration.
That settlement is an extension of an initial investigation of the U.S. Department of Labor covering 2018-2020 involving workers at the Jessup Correctional Institute.
Patrick Moran, president of AFSCME Council 3, blasted Hogan.
“I want to remind everyone how we got here today. Former Governor Larry Hogan, and his administration orchestrated a scheme to steal almost $23 million from overworked and understaffed correctional officers that he employed,” Moran said at Wednesday’s meeting.
“This is the department that Larry Hogan oversaw, and his employees managed. After being caught by our union and the federal Department of Labor for engaging in wage theft, Larry Hogan’s administration refused to speak with us about this wage theft. Even on his last day in office, Larry Hogan continued to conceal the scope of this multibillion-dollar wage theft. The federal Department of Labor found such damning evidence of wage theft under Larry Hogan’s administration that it had to pay three years’ worth of back pay — the maximum federal penalty allowed — to thousands of state employees.”
Moran demanded accountability for the payroll issues.
“It’s a disservice to the taxpayers, it’s a disservice to the employees that no one has been held accountable for this wage theft,” said Moran. “Are they still working in state government? Are they working in county government? They have no place in government because they do not have the trust of the taxpayer and the people now.”
Last summer, Moran and other union officials called the July payout “the second largest wage theft settlement for correctional officers in United States history.”
Employees successfully claimed the department failed to pay them for time worked over their shifts.
Union leaders said at the time that other wage theft claims remained under investigation.
In February 2022, the U.S. Department of Labor found the same agency violated the Fair Labor Standards Act for underpaying employees of the Jessup Correctional Institute.
Employees there claimed that the department failed to pay them for time worked over their shifts.
The agency determined that the state engaged in wage theft.
The Department of Labor ordered the state to pay out more than $468,000 to settle the complaints.
That initial case at Jessup expanded to include the Department of Juvenile Services and the state corrections agency. In that complaint, the Department of Labor was asked to look at rounding errors for both start and end times.
