By Michele Kurtz, Globe Correspondent, 2/12/2002

Rank-and-file employees of the state's courts and some elected court officials are pressuring judges to join them in working eight days without pay to avoid layoffs. They say the court system can't expect the lowest-paid employees to take a pay cut if its highest earners don't.

''Shame on them,'' said Richard Iannella, the Suffolk County Register of Probate. ''I don't know how any of them go home and sleep at night if they didn't take a salary deferral.''

About 500 members of one employee group have filed Freedom of Information requests with the trial court administration asking for the names of trial court judges and clerks who have not volunteered to forgo pay as part of a systemwide cost-cutting plan.

Trial court officials said yesterday they're still compiling data on how many judges agreed to the pay cut and don't plan to release their names. The salary deferral plan is designed to help close a $40 million budget gap.

Yesterday, Iannella sent a letter to the 36 judges of the state Supreme Judicial Court and the Appeals Court, which are separate from the trial court system, urging them to donate eight days of pay on their own.

''If you would lead us, do not stand and point the way - take our hands and walk with us,'' Iannella wrote. ''Your agreement to a pay cut will do immeasurable good for court morale.''

Calls seeking comment from those courts' officials were not returned yesterday.

Less than two weeks ago, the chief administrative justice for the state's trial courts asked all 7,900 court employees to work eight days without pay with the understanding that they would eventually be reimbursed or could take extra vacation days.

If all court employees participate - including trial court judges - the move would save the court system $11.4 million and prevent massive layoffs this spring, Chief Justice Barbara A. Dortch-Okara said.

Through early retirements, attrition, and other budget cuts the court system was able to make up the rest of the original $40 million shortfall.

Hoping to save jobs, the two unions that represent the majority of the state's court employees took votes and agreed their members would work the eight days without pay.

At least one union said the agreement was contingent on about 1,400 nonunion employees volunteering to work without pay, as well. Those employees, whose salaries are set by statute, are judges, clerks, and registrars.

Yesterday, representatives of appointed and elected clerks told Dortch-Okara that about 95 percent of clerks, whose salaries start at $22,000, had agreed to the cut. So did registrars like Iannella, who makes $88,600.

But what about the state's roughly 250 trial court judges?

''That's the big question,'' said Mary Babic, a spokeswoman for the Service Employees International Union's Local 254, which represents about 2,500 court officers and probation officers.

''We really want the judges to do this, because we want our members to do this ... We want to save jobs.''

Although employees were asked to send in forms by last Friday specifying whether they wanted to defer pay or take extra vacation, trial court officials said yesterday they're still awaiting forms.

Like the clerks, judges - whose pay starts at $112,777 - aren't bound by a union's agreement and will decide individually whether they will work without pay.

The executive committee of the Massachusetts Judges Conference plans to draft a recommendation on the issue tonight, but so far the organization hasn't polled judges on the issue, Executive Director Joseph McDonough said.

Some judges have said privately that they worry that agreeing to take a pay cut will set a dangerous precedent for court employees and possibly lead to years of legislative cuts to the court system.

McDonough wouldn't predict how many judges would volunteer to work without pay, but said that even if they don't, they plan to address the chronic budget crisis.

''I think the judges will take the lead on this,'' he said. ''Sometimes leadership is not always doing the popular thing.''

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*This article reprinted from the Boston Globe, 2/12/02.

© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.