By Tom Lisi
LNP, Lancaster, Pa.
LANCASTER, Pa. — Lancaster County officials have asked a judge to throw out a labor arbitration decision that awards additional time off to Lancaster County Prison corrections officers who worked mandatory overtime shifts during summer months.
The county commissioners office filed the request in Lancaster Court Court on Friday, claiming the union had no right to seek a change in its existing labor agreement.
District Council 89 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees represents more than 250 corrections officers at the prison, according to the court filing.
Arbitrators issued their ruling on the labor dispute Sept. 14 . The decision seeks to provide corrections officers additional rest to compensate them for working in hot, uncomfortable conditions.
Arbitrators awarded corrections officers time off retroactive to 2023. Officers hired by June of this year were given 30 hours of “compensatory leave,” and officers hired before Sept. 30, 2023, receive an additional 30 hours.
Going forward, the ruling awards corrections officers an extra day off each time they are required to work an additional shift between May 1 and Sept. 30 . They can take that day off at any time, for any reason, as long as they give at least 24 hours notice. Officers also can be paid out for the additional time off if the time goes unused by the end of September.
The arbitration award is the third involving the county in the last two years. The county reached an impasse with a union representing parole and probation officers in 2023 and another representing courthouse employees in 2024.
Arbitration awards tend to be difficult to overturn, according to Jean Martin, president of the Lancaster United Labor Council. The point of arbitration is generally to avoid costly and lengthy litigation, she said.
“That’s why you have arbitration, and whatever the arbitrator rules is what the decision is,” Martin said.
The award extends past the officers’ current contract, which expires next year. The new provisions would expire once officers begin working at the new county prison, which is slated to be built on a 78-acre site in Lancaster Township.
While the commissioners have not committed to a timeline for building the new prison, a recent study estimates a groundbreaking before the end of 2025 with construction wrapping up within two years.
A known quantity
The current labor contract between the county and corrections officers acknowledges the need for mandatory overtime, in part because the prison must operate at all times.
County officials have acknowledged for years that the prison at 625 E. King St. in Lancaster is uncomfortable during the hottest weeks of the year. Prisoners have complained as recently as July and have begged for more relief in cells that they say have little to no air circulation.
One prisoner said living in his cell was like spending endless hours in a parked car in the sun.
Most offices and the medical unit in the prison are air conditioned, but the housing units are not.
Recent pay increases for corrections officers have increased staffing levels. Corrections officers in 2021 started with a base pay of $18.50 an hour. Last year, the base wage climbed to $25.50 an hour under the new bargaining agreement.
The county argues in its petition that a panel of three arbitrators should not have allowed the union to pursue changes to its contract because it did not raise the issue in negotiating its existing contract, and nothing about the working conditions at the prison has changed. The lack of climate control at the prison has been a reality for years, and corrections officers knew that before they were hired, its filing says.
To be permitted to negotiate terms in an existing contract over working conditions that have not changed removes the entire purpose of the contract, the county argues.
“The county did nothing to alter its relationship with its employees because it did not unilaterally change anything related to the prison’s climate control system,” the filing says.
High temperatures, however, have changed. Five of the 18 hottest days in the last 25 years occurred in 2023 and 2024 as temperatures nationwide continue to rise, according to newspaper archives.
The corrections officer union has yet to respond in court, and a request for comment from AFSCME District Council 89 was not returned Monday, a state holiday. The union largely represents government workers.
None of the three Lancaster County commissioners — Josh Parsons, Ray D’Agostino and Alice Yoder — responded to requests for comment Monday.
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