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Corrections Director Scott Frakes announced Tuesday a couple of pilot projects that would affect staffing, overtime, engagement and safety at Tecumseh and the Nebraska State Penitentiary, beginning in October.

At Tecumseh, Frakes said, the department planned to move away from 12-hour emergency staffing and mandatory overtime that has been used since the Mother's Day riot in 2015, and allow protective services staff to opt for 12-hour or eight-hour shifts.Ìý

At the penitentiary in Lincoln, the department would create sergeant supervisors to reduce the high numbers of staff serving under lieutenants.Ìý

Mike Marvin said Thursday he had exchanged a string of frustrating emails with Frakes, telling him that NAPE/AFSCME had received a ruling in 2013 from the Nebraska Commission of Industrial Relations on the issue of implementing a new shift pilot program without first bargaining with the union.Ìý

On Thursday, Marvin told Frakes if he tries to implement any plan without negotiating it, the union will file a prohibited practice charge with the Commission of Industrial Relations.Ìý

Frakes said Thursday he was moving forward with the work needed to develop the pilot projects.

"And I will not engage represented employees in the planning process, as I stated to Mr. Marvin," he said.

Marvin said that in April Frakes was given a proposal that would have established a pilot alternate shift at Tecumseh. It contained a proposal on female-only positions at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women at York, but Marvin said Frakes would only talk about the alternate shifts.

"If he had been willing to come to an agreement, the membership would have already voted whether or not to agree," Marvin said in a Facebook post.

Marvin received a letter from Frakes, written Wednesday, saying that Frakes takes the quality of life and engagement concerns of Corrections employees seriously and he intends to do all he can to address them. Officers have told him the current shift scheduling makes it hard for them to find a balance in work and home life.

"Nebraska Corrections employees will be the biggest beneficiaries of any changes," Frakes said in the letter. "The pilot should demonstrate how 12-hour shifts can be utilized effectively, and would assist in transitioning from the emergency staffing schedule currently in place at the facility." 

Frakes stressed that no scheduling changes were imminent, and the management team is still exploring how the pilot would be implemented.

"I'm hopeful that NAPE leadership will support its members' best interests and join in our management team's good-faith effort to address the concerns of our employees," Frakes said.Ìý

Marvin reminded Frakes about the Commission of Industrial Relations decision, which ordered the department to cease and desist from unilaterally implementing a pilot scheduling program without first bargaining.

"If he tries to implement it," Marvin said Thursday, "we'll file in the CIR and get an order to stop again."  

All he has to do, Marvin said, is sit down and negotiate in good faith, and then the union would put it out to the membership and see if they want it.Ìý

"We have put it on the table for the last six years," he said, "but they don't want to give anything for it. They want to dictate everything. They don't want to have any back and forth on it."