Every new state union contract since 2021 has had a $3,000 bonus. How much has been spent?

PROVIDENCE − In the years since the McKee administration promised $3,000 bonuses to Providence teachers to help settle a bitter and long-running contract dispute, every new state union contract has come with a bonus.

A vaccination bonus. An appreciation bonus. A retention bonus. A signing bonus. A body-cam bonus.

The bonuses for state workers have come at a cost of about $25 million, plus another $6 million for teachers.

But the new four-year pact − announced late last week − with the Rhode Island Brotherhood of Correctional Officers is the first in which $3,000 retention bonuses were awarded, along with retroactive raises, to people who no longer work for the state and may not have done so since 2020.

The numbers: Of the 1,042 bargaining unit members eligible, 913 active RIBCO union members are slated to receive this latest round of $3,000 bonuses, while "129 have [already} separated from their positions," according to the state.

A spokesman for Gov. Dan McKee referred Journal questions on the rationale for paying retention bonuses to former Department of Corrections employees to the Department of Administration, where spokeswoman Laura Hart said the move was "part of union negotiations."

RIBCO president Richard Ferruccio told The Journal on Monday that "it's really just a matter of ... fundamental fairness."

Unlike most other state workers, he said, "my membership actually worked [the] entire COVID thing inside the prison." Two died. Had it not taken this long to negotiate a new contract, he said, those who worked through the worst of the pandemic would have gotten the raises and bonuses earlier, in some cases, before they left the state payroll.

"Unfortunately, it took us ... over a year longer to get it. So [excluding those already gone] would penalize people that were here. You know what I mean? Just because you're retired or you quit or whatever, the reason you would be penalized ... is [because] it took longer for us to negotiate the deal."

"It had to be applied retroactive. There's no other way around it."

More:Correctional officers to get $3,000 bonuses in new contract, even if they left the job

What we know about the $3,000 bonuses for state employees

Providence's schools have been under state control since November 2019, following a blistering report about the state of the schools by a team from Johns Hopkins University.

In addition to pay raises, the deal the McKee administration struck with the Providence arm of the American Federation of Teachers said: "Each teacher who is a member of the bargaining unit at the time of ratification of this agreement shall receive a one-time gross lump sum payment of $3,000."

The projected cost of the contract containing both retroactive and future raises was pegged at $20,672,482 during a period stretching from Sept. 1, 2020 to Aug. 31, 2023. Add to that the estimated $6-million cost of the bonuses.

In the years since those no-strings attached bonuses were handed out in summer 2021, hundreds of bonus recipients have left, contributing to what has been described to state lawmakers as a teacher shortage.

In response to inquiries from The Journal, Providence schools spokesman Nick Domings pegged the number of teacher resignations during the 2018-19 school year, which was the last full year before the state takeover, at 64.

During the 2019-20 school year, there were 109 resignations; the 2020-21 school year, 112; the 2021-22 school year, 194, and the 2022-23 school year, so far 169, he reported.

He has not yet responded to inquiries about how many of the teachers who resigned did so after getting the $3,000 "retention bonuses."

(The city school system subsequently offered additional "signing" and "referral" bonuses.)

The next round of $3,000 McKee bonuses appeared in the new contract between the McKee administration and the largest state employees union − Council 94, AFSCME.

They were initially cast as incentives for state employees to get inoculated against COVID-19, but in the face of public criticism, recast as "a retention bonus" for all union members "currently employed ... to remain employed with the state."

Each new settled state union contract that followed had similar wording, until the McKee administration linked the $3,000 election-year bonuses for members of the Rhode Island Troopers Association to their use of body cameras.

More:'No need to do that': A mistake to link state trooper bonuses to body cameras, McKee says

Once again, McKee called the terminology a mistake.

"There's no need to make up a story why we are compensating the state police in a way they are entitled to and deserve," McKee said in mid-March 2022 of the new contract signed by his administration's personnel administrator.

On Monday, the Department of Administration's Hart provided this tally:

"Including the RIBCO members, the state will pay approximately $25 million in bonuses to approximately 8,600 state employees. This represents 0.01% of the dollars the state spends annually on salaries and wages. Moreover, the bonuses are one-time payments that, unlike salary and wage increases, do not carry forward into the next year."

While the new RIBCO contract "is the only negotiated contract to date that has offered retroactive payments of the $3,000 bonuses," she said, "many negotiated contracts in the state include arrangements for retro pay increases for employees who have since separated from state employment."

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Retention bonuses for RI state employees - how much has been spent?