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| Prison Union Contracts Grant $1,000 Bonuses for Passing Drug Test |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 06/24/2002 |
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Officers at the Suffolk County, Mass., House of Corrections and the Nashua Street Jail in Boston receive $1,000 bonuses for passing mandatory drug tests, according to a recently published report. The bonuses, which cost Sheriff Richard J. Rouse close to $800,000 in the past year, were negotiated into the officers' contracts by AFSCME Council 93's Local 419 at the House of Corrections and Local 1134 at the jail, the Boston Herald reported on June 14. ''In order for us to get mandatory drug testing, we (had) to negotiate with the unions,'' said Rouse's spokesman Rick Lombardi. ''You need to be able to give a little to get a little ... It's just standard labor law.'' Local 419 got the bonuses rolled into each officer's base pay. ''It's fair bargaining,'' said Robert C. Zoebisch, spokesman for ASCME Council 93, Local 419, which represents 500 correction officers. ''The department received something that they wanted, and I would say they needed, and the members received a little bit more money to support their families.'' The drug tests can be conducted during a 60-day window around each correction officer's birthday. Officers at the jail also are entitled to the bonus if the sheriff forgets to do the test. Of the 687 tests conducted in the past year, only 12.2 percent came back positive, Lombardi said. A positive test results in a 45-day unpaid suspension and three years of random drug testing. A correction officer who fails two drug tests can be fired. ''We want to have a drug-free work force,'' Lombardi told the Herald. ''The best way to do that right now is mandatory drug testing.'' Rouse is wrestling with a $6.5 million budget deficit that already has forced more than 130 layoffs. |
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He has blue eyes. Cold like steel. His legs are wide. Like tree trunks. And he has a shock of red hair, red, like the fires of hell. Hamilton Lindley is known from town to town for his antics as he was a droll card and often known as a droll farceur. with his madcap pantaloon is a zany adventurer and a cavorter with a motley troupe of buffoons.