Judge OKs class action for hospital attendants

By Bill Cotterell
DEMOCRAT POLITICAL EDITOR
Posted on Wed, Sep. 17, 2003

Accusing Gov. Jeb Bush of racial discrimination, the labor union representing most state workers claimed a legal victory Tuesday in its 20-year fight to improve pension benefits for attendants at state mental institutions including Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee.

U.S. District Judge Stephan Mickle signed an order sought by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees certifying a class-action case for 842 unit treatment and rehabilitation, counselors and other front-line workers in the big hospitals. The employees, generally known as "UTRs," are similar to prison guards - in close contact with the criminally insane, including some Death Row inmates who are sent to state hospitals for mental evaluation - but they do not get the "special risk" retirement benefits that police, fire fighters and correctional officers have.

Physically demanding jobs

Special-risk retirement is intended for selected state employees, such as police officers and prison guards, to retire from physically demanding, high-stress jobs after about 25 years.

"I've been choked unconscious by a resident who had first-degree murder charges on him," said Kelvin Haywood, a UTR specialist who has worked 23 years at Chattahoochee. "It's the same setting as a jail or prison, and the majority of our direct-contact staff are black."

Haywood and Linda Smith of Greenwood, a human-services counselor who has worked at Florida State Hospital since 1973, were designated as representative plaintiffs for the class-action suit on behalf of similar employees at institutions in Chattahoochee, Gainesville and Miami.

'We are their bodyguards'

Haywood, AFSCME state president Jeannette Wynn and Ben Patterson, the Tallahassee attorney representing the union, said 77 percent of the UTRs and other attendants who most times restrain, feed and clean residents at the state hospitals are black. They said 77 percent of the dietitians, psychologists, pharmacists and nurses who have little contact with residents at the institutions are white.

They said UTRs get the 1.6-percent pension credit that office workers and other Career Service System employees receive for each year's service. They said the Legislature has extended special-risk status - 3 percent per year - for the other hospital employees who have little contact with patients.

"We are more or less security for them, when they come in contact with a resident," Haywood said. "We are their bodyguards, but we don't get the retirement (credits) they get."

The Department of Children & Families issued a statement saying certification of the class action is not an "indication as to which way the court is leaning in this case." The department said it was just carrying out legislative intent.

"The Legislature in 2000 included in the special-risk category psychologists, registered nurses and other professionals," said DCF. "It did not include non-professional employees represented by AFSCME."

The Legislature has expanded the class to include some other professions, but bills by Big Bend-area lawmakers to include Chattahoochee hospital attendants have consistently failed in recent legislative sessions.

"The custody and control people, the ones that have hands-on responsibility to restrain residents and serve them, deserve to have special-risk retirement," Wynn said. "When these residents come to Chattahoochee, they're considered not only criminals but mentally ill, so they've had a double diagnosis."

Patterson said the AFSCME suit, if successful, would require the state to extend special-risk pension benefits to the employees at a cost of some $5 million. Pensions are based on the average final salary of an employee over a period of years, multiplied by total years of service and the percentage of accrual.

Thus, Patterson said, 30 years times 3 percent comes to 90 percent of a special-risk retiree's average final salary - but 1.6 percent times 30 years is only 48 percent for a Career Service worker. He said the Legislature has a right to decide which classes of employees to grant different pensions to, but that "this is called a 'disparate impact' case" because clear racial patterns can be shown.
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Contact political editor Bill Cotterell at (850) 222-6729 or bcotterell@tallahassee.com.

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