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Get it together, IDOC

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Illinois

A county board chairman has raised concerns after he said the Illinois Department of Corrections failed to test 5 correctional officers who worked at Stateville Correctional Center, a state-run prison that has been among the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The prison has reported a growing number of coronavirus cases and the Illinois Department of Corrections had asked for officers from other prisons to fill in at Stateville. Fulton County Board Chairman Pat O’Brian said officers from Illinois River Correctional Center were told they would be tested after their rotation at Stateville and placed on 14-day paid quarantine. O’Brian said that is not happening.

“They were essentially releasing five individuals back into our communities that had been working at one of the largest COVID outbreaks in a prison in the state of Illinois,” O’Brian said. “We had to act on that.”

State Sen. Dave Koehler, D-Peoria, and State Rep. Mike Unes, R-East Peoria, have been in contact with the governor’s office regarding the issues.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker was asked about the issue on Tuesday at a news conference but declined to provide specifics.

I’ve read a few other articles about this. Here are a couple of them..

* Fulton County Board Chairman accuses Department of Corrections of breaking promise

* Fulton County chairman says Illinois DOC went back on its promise to employees

Not one of those reporters bothered to reach out to AFSCME Council 31 for its response. So I did.

* Here’s Anders Lindall…

Last month IDOC sought volunteers from other facilities to be temporarily detailed to Stateville in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak there. It’s our understanding that, without talking to the union, some management personnel promised that — upon the completion of three to five weeks of working 12-hour shifts, five days a week at Stateville — staff who volunteered to participate would remain in paid status during a 14-day self-quarantine period before returning to work at their usual facility. This promise was subsequently withdrawn.

AFSCME’s top priority is safety and making sure that the employees involved could be immediately tested for COVID-19 before returning to work. That would not only prevent the potential spread of coronavirus infection between facilities but ensure that anyone found to have contracted it could get needed medical attention while taking the COVID leave available to all state employees. The union pushed hard and made it happen.

The union has also filed a grievance over management’s withdrawal of the promised 14 days’ leave. These unnecessary complications and confusion could have been avoided if the department had simply agreed upon a procedure with AFSCME in advance and prevented some supervisors from dealing directly with individual employees.

posted by Rich Miller
Wednesday, Apr 22, 20 @ 4:09 pm

Comments

I’m so shocked managment would do that/s. Hope the workers got it on paper…

Comment by Union thug Wednesday, Apr 22, 20 @ 4:17 pm
I fail to see why they should be tested if they don’t have symptoms? You and I won’t be tested without symptoms.
Under that premise each employee should be tested daily.

Comment by Pete Mitchell Wednesday, Apr 22, 20 @ 5:32 pm
=== I fail to see why they should be tested if they don’t have symptoms?===

An asymptomatic person for weeks unknowingly infecting person after person in a confined area.

Does it make sense… now?

Comment by Oswego Willy Wednesday, Apr 22, 20 @ 5:34 pm
No. See above.
Under that premise all employees should be tested daily.

Comment by Pete Mitchell Wednesday, Apr 22, 20 @ 5:43 pm
=== Under that premise all employees should be tested daily.===

In public buildings in other parts of the world, and the White House, days begin with taking a quick temperature.

We can’t get the temperatures of employees before shifts?

Comment by Oswego Willy Wednesday, Apr 22, 20 @ 5:51 pm
Under that premise all Dr all Nurses and pretty much all essential employees should be tested daily.

Comment by Pete Mitchell Wednesday, Apr 22, 20 @ 5:52 pm
I believe all DOC employees have temps taken on a daily basis before entry just like hospital and nursing home employees.

Comment by Pete Mitchell Wednesday, Apr 22, 20 @ 5:53 pm
=== Under that premise all Dr all Nurses and pretty much all essential employees should be tested daily.===

Why can’t we?

That’s right, not enough tests or quick enough results.

You getting where I’m taking you?

We’re not ready to open much when testing can’t be done when necessary, and when we are also struggling with asymptomatic folks too.

That’s the point of this exercise.

C’mon IDOC… but the testing and such still lags too.

Comment by Oswego Willy Wednesday, Apr 22, 20 @ 5:55 pm
This is only scratching the surface with IDOC. Every single day they send large groups of offenders to recreation to share phones, play basketball, and gather in groups. Every single day the Gov agencies operate under a different set of rules than everyone else. Welcome to the mess AFSCME - you should have calling out the Gov long before this.

Comment by Southern Wednesday, Apr 22, 20 @ 6:00 pm
What is so surprising about all this? This is IDOC after all, and everyone should understand that the agency is short-sighted in it’s approach to every situation. By now, local communities surrounding State prisons should detect that IDOC’s Covid response has been very inadequate on all levels.

Comment by Larry Sanders Wednesday, Apr 22, 20 @ 6:17 pm
Nice. So some of those employees may live in Fulton County where there are only a couple of acknowledged cases (although, since testing is so sparse, the numbers are surely higher). This is what rural Americans are missing. This is how they can be touched by what they think is mainly an urban issue.

For the record my neighbors on each side of my house work at the prison in question. Fortunately we are staying in doors and have had no contact with anyone since the governor’s shelter order.

Thanks IDOC./s

Comment by JS Mill Wednesday, Apr 22, 20 @ 7:43 pm
The CMS approved leave policy allows for 10 days at full pay if the employee themselves is positive or told to quarantine but 10 days at 2/3 pay if the employee has to quarantine because say their spouse has Covid and must quarantine.

Non essential workers home with full pay. Essential workers with docked pay because they are staying home in isolation as they should.

The State guidelines and AFSCME have failed state employees across many agencies.

Comment by Sweet-ish Union Thug Wednesday, Apr 22, 20 @ 8:25 pm
This is one of the stupidest things I could imagine occurring during an infectious disease pandemic where the goal is to prevent the spread of the infectious disease within the DOC’s individual facilities.

So what do they do? They get volunteers from other facilities to go to a facility with the most significant break out, spend a couple of weeks working there, and then send them back to their own facilities and put them back to work immediately.

Regardless of the other factors involved, which apparently includes lying to their employees in order to convince them to volunteer for a potentially deadly assignment, it shows an absolute lack of understanding of the issue that has resulted in multiple executive orders and daily press conferences.

This is the kind of thing that indicates that multiple people need to be fired and not quietly.

Comment by Candy Dogood Thursday, Apr 23, 20 @ 12:05 am
===The CMS approved leave policy allows for 10 days at full pay if the employee themselves is positive or told to quarantine but 10 days at 2/3 pay if the employee has to quarantine because say their spouse has Covid and must quarantine.

This is how pandemics spread–while prisons are difficult situations, incentives matter and these create the long incentives.

Comment by ArchPundit Thursday, Apr 23, 20 @ 12:43 am