That, combined with a crowded prison population, increased the workload and demand for nurses even as a shortage nationwide left the state with vacancies.
Union Rules
Union-negotiated rules required state departments to handle the extra work by offering overtime to California nurses before bringing in contract nurses from private companies. The requirement led to a greater reliance on overtime for nursing in California than in any other state, one that persists to this day.
Nurses in California last year made $673 million in total pay, including $103 million in overtime, or 15.3 percent. By contrast, those in New York made $561 million in total pay, of which almost $40 million was in overtime, or 7.1 percent.
Forty-two nurses in California’s prisons and mental hospitals have reaped especially rich overtime payouts. They made an average of $1.3 million each during the seven years, including $674,000 in overtime.
The highest-paid nurse in the seven years was Lina Manglicmot, who worked at a state prison in Soledad, about 130 miles (209 kilometers) south of San Francisco. She collected $1.7 million from 2005 through 2011, including $1 million in overtime, the data show. Manglicmot declined to comment.
Wage Concessions
Curbing the compensation of California employees eluded Schwarzenegger through two terms as he tried to pry wage concessions back from their unions.
In 2009, he responded to a growing financial crisis by imposing furloughs, or a mandatory unpaid day off each month, for all state workers. The forced time off later grew to three days a month.
Furloughs depressed regular wages while increasing overtime compensation for employees, such as prison guards, who had to work through them. The first six months of the furloughs, for instance, cost California $52 million in accrued vacation time for prison guards alone, according to findings by the state Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes.