(TAMPA) – Teamsters Local 2011, the bargaining agent for 19,000 officers employed by the Florida Department of Corrections (DOC), has filed a law suit in Leon County Circuit Court (Case No. 2013 CA 002360) that seeks to stop the state from forfeiting time accrued by correctional officers for work performed on statutorily-established state holidays throughout the year.
 
Since prisons are staffed on an ongoing basis, regardless of holidays, DOC officers are mandated to work and receive compensatory time-off for the hours worked. Under these mandates, these state employees have spent one or more holidays away from their families and are now having those hours unilaterally taken from their compensatory leave balances.

“The governor left us with no alternative, as his negotiators refused to agree to a workable, legal solution in the new DOC contract,” said Ken Wood, International Vice President for the Teamsters. “The men and women who closely supervise inmates in the third largest prison system in the United States should be properly compensated for all hours worked. We are asking the court to order DOC to comply with the relevant provisions of Florida law.”

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