Thursday, October 16, 2003

Youth workers plan no-confidence vote

By GREGORY D. KESICH, Portland Press Herald Writer

Union workers at the Long Creek Youth Development Center, citing low morale and poor working conditions, plan to take a vote of no confidence in the juvenile facility's senior managers next week.

The vote is also driven by the revelation that some of the same managers, including Superintendent Lars Olsen, Assistant Superintendent Robert Lancaster and psychologist Barbara Heath, approved of extended isolation and restraint of a teenage resident in the late 1990s, union chairman Robert McCormick said.

They are among 14 current and former state employees named in a pending lawsuit which is scheduled for trial in February. Gov. John Baldacci's office is conducting an internal investigation, and a legislative inquiry may follow.

"With this dark cloud hanging over the managers in question, we can't move forward with confidence," said McCormick, the chairman of AFSCME Local 2968-01, which represents 71 employees, including the center's front line staff. "That is the reason for the vote."

Olsen could not be reached for comment. Denise Lord, a spokeswoman for the Maine Department of Corrections, said she was disappointed the workers would make this move when conditions are improving at the juvenile facility.

Lord said training has been increased and injuries are down since moving into the new facility in South Portland 14 months ago.

Tensions between management and labor at the former Maine Youth Center and Long Creek are not new. AFSCME workers have been working without a contact since July 1. Union members say that has damaged what was already fragile morale at the facility.

Union members leveled many of the same charges in a no-confidence vote in 1996. McCormick said they were ready to take a similar vote last year, but held off after management promised to resolve their safety concerns.

In a letter sent Wednesday to union members, McCormick said a vote is now appropriate in light of the lawsuit. The court records show that senior managers at the former Maine Youth Center approved of binding a teenager's hands and feet for as long as 47 continuous hours, and locking him in a solitary confinement-type cell for as long as 87 days, exceeding the maximum limits set in policy.

McCormick said that until these revelations, abuses at the youth center were blamed on "rogue staff" and not on their leaders.

"The focus is now where it should be," he said. "It wasn't the line staff that decided to restrain a kid for 47 hours or lock him up for 87 days. It was the managers that decided to do that, yet we took the heat."

McCormick said about a quarter of union members are unable to work or are on light duty as a result of assaults by residents or job-related stress. He said training at the facility is inadequate. He said new employees "are thrown to the wolves" when they start work.

Lord said staff training at the youth center has increased dramatically over the last four years. Employees have been trained in a treatment-based approach to disciplinary issues, as well as in the use of a new computer information system that tracks every child committed to the facility.

New staff members receive four weeks of initial training and two weeks of additional training after they have begun work.

Lord said assaults are falling after a peak of 38 in the year that ended June 30, 2001. There were 24 assaults in 2002 and 14 in the year that ended June 30, she said.

But those numbers are misleading, said union co-chairman Steve Farrell. In 2002, the old Maine Youth Center was replaced by two facilities, Long Creek and Mountain View in Charleston. The youth center of 2001 typically had more than 200 residents, while Long Creek, serving southern Maine, usually has 140.

A spokesman for Gov. John Baldacci could not be reached Wednesday for comment.

Farrell said workers are frustrated by the lack of a contract and long-time employees are concerned that tight state budgets could result in the same cost cutting that led to abuses at the Maine Youth Center a decade ago.

"It appears we are repeating the same failed polices of the early 1990s that totally devastated this place," he said.

Staff Writer Gregory D. Kesich can be contacted at 791-6336 or at:

gkesich@pressherald.com

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