California Highway Patrol, prison officers compete for pay, respect
Published: Tuesday, May. 31, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 1A
The "pony riders" vs. "thugs" feud goes back a half-century, long before state workers unionized.
Ostensibly, the battle between the California Association of Highway Patrolmen and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association is about money. It's really always been about what money represents: respect.
"It's like sitting in a bar with guys in the Army and the Marines when the conversation turns to, 'Who's the toughest?' " said Tim Hodson, who heads the Center for California Studies at California State University, Sacramento. "Who's more macho?"
Take the new contract negotiated by the correctional officers and signed this month by Gov. Jerry Brown.
Critics have blasted the deal as the comeback governor's valentine to the union that spent nearly $2 million to help him win the election.
But when prison officers look at their patrol counterparts, they still aren't satisfied.
"Longevity pay, bilingual pay, uniform pay … There are a lot of areas where we'd like to close the gap," said CCPOA president Mike Jimenez.
Talk with either side about the tussle, and conversation starts with compliments.
Jimenez: "We respect the CHP as a brother law enforcement agency."
Jon Hamm, CEO of the California Association of Highway Patrolmen: "I respect and appreciate the work that correctional officers do."
But the derogatory shorthand each group has for the other is well-known: Prison officers are "thugs," "prison guards" and "knuckle draggers." Patrol officers are "traffic officers," "AAA with a gun" and "pony riders," a reference to their horseback patrols around the Capitol.
Hamm acknowledged that a rivalry exists, and that it can get ugly.
"The fact that everyone knows about this rift, I'm not proud of it," he said. "I really don't want correctional officers to believe that we think less of them for what they do. That's not what this is about."
Or is it? The CCPOA's motto, "the toughest beat," implies that all other public safety groups – including CHP officers – have easier jobs.
Ian Pickett, a Kern Valley State Prison sergeant, said he has "the utmost respect for what the CHP does," and recognizes that every freeway stop is a potential shootout.
"With that said, the CHP often walks up to a window and finds a little old lady with a lead foot," Pickett said, "whereas correctional officers always walk up to convicted, often violent felons."
CHP officers tend to see corrections as the state's version of local jailers: an entry-level position that isn't about enforcing the law.
"The California Highway Patrol has always thought of itself as the elite," said Glen Craig, CHP's commissioner from 1975 to 1983. "And they've always been competing at the bargaining table and in the Legislature (with the CCPOA) for pay and benefits for their people."
Pay for correctional officers and cadets ranges from $3,050 to $6,144 per month, 25 percent less than the pay of their patrol counterparts.
Their new contract includes one unpaid day off per month. The patrol contract signed last year doesn't.
The disparities run the other way, too.
The CCPOA contract eliminates the 640-hour limit on leave time that correctional officers can accrue. Those hours can be cashed out at the employee's final pay rate when he or she quits or retires, an exit nest egg that can be worth tens of thousands of dollars.
The state has always winked at leave caps in general and for prison officers in particular because institutions are short-staffed. Two years of furloughs aggravated the problem.
The result: CCPOA members average 19 weeks of leave on the books, worth a collective $610 million, a state analysis shows.
The patrol officers' deal still has a leave cap, and an edict to adhere to it has upset some CHP officers and managers.
"We're enforcing excess leave cap as best we can," said CHP spokeswoman Fran Clader.
Long fight for equality
The competition for pay and respect goes back decades to an era before the unionized state work force, when prison and patrol officers belonged to fraternal groups.
Ostensibly, the battle between the California Association of Highway Patrolmen and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association is about money. It's really always been about what money represents: respect.
"It's like sitting in a bar with guys in the Army and the Marines when the conversation turns to, 'Who's the toughest?' " said Tim Hodson, who heads the Center for California Studies at California State University, Sacramento. "Who's more macho?"
Take the new contract negotiated by the correctional officers and signed this month by Gov. Jerry Brown.
Critics have blasted the deal as the comeback governor's valentine to the union that spent nearly $2 million to help him win the election.
But when prison officers look at their patrol counterparts, they still aren't satisfied.
"Longevity pay, bilingual pay, uniform pay … There are a lot of areas where we'd like to close the gap," said CCPOA president Mike Jimenez.
Talk with either side about the tussle, and conversation starts with compliments.
Jimenez: "We respect the CHP as a brother law enforcement agency."
Jon Hamm, CEO of the California Association of Highway Patrolmen: "I respect and appreciate the work that correctional officers do."
But the derogatory shorthand each group has for the other is well-known: Prison officers are "thugs," "prison guards" and "knuckle draggers." Patrol officers are "traffic officers," "AAA with a gun" and "pony riders," a reference to their horseback patrols around the Capitol.
Hamm acknowledged that a rivalry exists, and that it can get ugly.
"The fact that everyone knows about this rift, I'm not proud of it," he said. "I really don't want correctional officers to believe that we think less of them for what they do. That's not what this is about."
Or is it? The CCPOA's motto, "the toughest beat," implies that all other public safety groups – including CHP officers – have easier jobs.
Ian Pickett, a Kern Valley State Prison sergeant, said he has "the utmost respect for what the CHP does," and recognizes that every freeway stop is a potential shootout.
"With that said, the CHP often walks up to a window and finds a little old lady with a lead foot," Pickett said, "whereas correctional officers always walk up to convicted, often violent felons."
CHP officers tend to see corrections as the state's version of local jailers: an entry-level position that isn't about enforcing the law.
"The California Highway Patrol has always thought of itself as the elite," said Glen Craig, CHP's commissioner from 1975 to 1983. "And they've always been competing at the bargaining table and in the Legislature (with the CCPOA) for pay and benefits for their people."
Pay for correctional officers and cadets ranges from $3,050 to $6,144 per month, 25 percent less than the pay of their patrol counterparts.
Their new contract includes one unpaid day off per month. The patrol contract signed last year doesn't.
The disparities run the other way, too.
The CCPOA contract eliminates the 640-hour limit on leave time that correctional officers can accrue. Those hours can be cashed out at the employee's final pay rate when he or she quits or retires, an exit nest egg that can be worth tens of thousands of dollars.
The state has always winked at leave caps in general and for prison officers in particular because institutions are short-staffed. Two years of furloughs aggravated the problem.
The result: CCPOA members average 19 weeks of leave on the books, worth a collective $610 million, a state analysis shows.
The patrol officers' deal still has a leave cap, and an edict to adhere to it has upset some CHP officers and managers.
"We're enforcing excess leave cap as best we can," said CHP spokeswoman Fran Clader.
Long fight for equality
Most of the time, the prison officers have been on the bottom looking up.
In the 1950s, correctional officers complained that they earned less than fish feeders at San Francisco's Steinhart Aquarium, according to Joshua Page, a University of Minnesota sociology professor who has studied the union.
In the 1960s, the CCPOA's forerunner, the California Correctional Officers Association, sought legislation to enhance member retirements. The Highway Patrol group fought them.
"There was real resentment that the patrol didn't help," said Page, whose new book, "The Toughest Beat," details the episode. "The correctional officers have always felt like CHP got all the respect and didn't have to do much to get it."
State prison officers in 1977 earned between $1,097 and $1,260 per month, about $200 less than CHP officers.
Not long after that, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that allowed state employees to organize.
Prison officers brushed off overtures from the Teamsters and other unions and organized themselves. They wanted to create an association focused on their unique interests, much like the Highway Patrol's.
Under the leadership of Don Novey, the CCPOA became a formidable player in Sacramento by leveraging millions of dollars from members' dues to reward its friends and punish its enemies.
It established an informal link between its members' wages and patrol officers' pay by waiting until the Highway Patrol's union settled on a contract, Hamm said, then using the patrol deal to argue for prison officer pay.
"I complained about it for years," Hamm said. "I literally couldn't negotiate for my members because we were negotiating for their members, too. Everyone knew it. It was a joke."
Although by law the patrol wages were supposed to be based on what police and sheriffs' deputies earn in five large law enforcement departments around California, the state ignored the statute for many years.
The CAHP sued to re-establish the link and lost. Then Gov. Gray Davis formally recognized the tie in a five-year contract with the CAHP.
Symbolic victory
From 2001 to 2006, state figures show, correctional officers' salaries rose by about one-third – right along with their patrol counterparts' pay.
"That was a material victory, but it was also very symbolic," Page said. "It meant that correctional officers were as valued as the CHP."
The CCPOA's deal expired in 2006 and with it the contractual tie to CHP officers' earnings. Talks with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger deadlocked. Frustrated, the union a year later sponsored a bill to preserve the pay connection.
Hamm saw it as a make-or-break moment. If the bill passed, the state would forever calibrate his 6,100-member union's contracts by what the deals would cost to cover the 30,000-member CCPOA.
After heavy lobbying on both sides, the measure stalled.
"People said we won," Hamm said. "I didn't see it that way. We were fighting for survival, not to defeat somebody."
With talks at an impasse and the pay legislation dead, Schwarzenegger imposed terms on the CCPOA.
The "knuckle draggers" were on the bottom. Again.
Now, after several years without raises or even the increased employer contributions to health insurance given to all other state workers, the CCPOA is on the rebound.
Schwarzenegger, who once famously cracked that the only difference between prisoners and prison guards is which side of the bars they're on, is gone.
"Maria's not much happier to be rid of him than I am," Jimenez said, referring to the former governor's split with his wife.
His union is at peace with the Brown administration. Its new contract, which runs to July 2013, brings its members to health insurance parity in two years.
Jimenez, who turns 50 next month, had considered retiring. Now he's hoping for re-election in August to a third and final three-year term – and to negotiate one last contract.
Asked about re-establishing the pay link with CHP, Jimenez said: "I'd like to do better."
Meanwhile, the CCPOA and Davis agreed to set prison officers' pay based on what CHP officers made. The deal fixed CCPOA members' base wages at $666 per month less than what their patrol counterparts earned.
The competition for pay and respect goes back decades to an era before the unionized state work force, when prison and patrol officers belonged to fraternal groups.From 2001 to 2006, state figures show, correctional officers' salaries rose by about one-third – right along with their patrol counterparts' pay.
"That was a material victory, but it was also very symbolic," Page said. "It meant that correctional officers were as valued as the CHP."
The CCPOA's deal expired in 2006 and with it the contractual tie to CHP officers' earnings. Talks with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger deadlocked. Frustrated, the union a year later sponsored a bill to preserve the pay connection.
Hamm saw it as a make-or-break moment. If the bill passed, the state would forever calibrate his 6,100-member union's contracts by what the deals would cost to cover the 30,000-member CCPOA.
After heavy lobbying on both sides, the measure stalled.
"People said we won," Hamm said. "I didn't see it that way. We were fighting for survival, not to defeat somebody."
With talks at an impasse and the pay legislation dead, Schwarzenegger imposed terms on the CCPOA.
The "knuckle draggers" were on the bottom. Again.
Now, after several years without raises or even the increased employer contributions to health insurance given to all other state workers, the CCPOA is on the rebound.
Schwarzenegger, who once famously cracked that the only difference between prisoners and prison guards is which side of the bars they're on, is gone.
"Maria's not much happier to be rid of him than I am," Jimenez said, referring to the former governor's split with his wife.
His union is at peace with the Brown administration. Its new contract, which runs to July 2013, brings its members to health insurance parity in two years.
Jimenez, who turns 50 next month, had considered retiring. Now he's hoping for re-election in August to a third and final three-year term – and to negotiate one last contract.
Asked about re-establishing the pay link with CHP, Jimenez said: "I'd like to do better."
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