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McNally: CCA layoffs no surprise
YOUNGSTOWN
Mayor John A. McNally said the announcement by the Corrections Corporation of America that 185 employees will be laid off from CCA’s Northeast Ohio Correctional Center doesn’t surprise him.
“It’s not unexpected. We’ve known this day would probably be coming since the day the [U.S.] Bureau of Prisons notified CCA that their contract would not be renewed,” McNally said, referring to the late December notification.
The layoffs, which are expected to occur at midnight May 30, stem from the May 31 expiration and nonrenewal of CCA’s contract with BOP to house 1,400 inmates at NEOCC, the Nashville-Tenn.-based CCA said.
When it announced nonrenewal of the contract for NEOCC, BOP said it had made contract awards to the Moshannon Valley Correctional Center in Phillipsburg, Pa., and the Great Plains Correctional Facility in Hinton, Okla.
“We’ve made some adjustment to our budget already in terms of income-tax receipts” the city is projecting it will receive in the future after the CCA layoffs, the mayor said.
Atty. Andrea Cooper, the corporation’s senior director of human-resources compliance, sent the notice to the mayor March 24, accompanied by a list of the affected employees and their job titles. Located at 2240 Hubbard Road, NEOCC employs 344 people.
Cooper wrote the layoffs are expected to be permanent and that the people being laid off have “no applicable bumping rights” to displace other CCA workers.
A separate U.S. Marshals Service contract to house 580 inmates at NEOCC expires Dec. 31, 2018.
In her letter, Cooper wrote the layoffs are being triggered by a “facility closing.”
She corrected herself in a Vindicator interview.
“The facility itself is not shuttering” because NEOCC has another inmate housing contract, she said, referring all other inquiries to Jonathan Burns, CCA’s senior manager of public affairs.
Cooper wrote her letter in response to the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN, which requires 60 days’ advance notice of large facility closings or mass layoffs.
Burns said CCA will cancel its WARN notice and cancel or reduce the layoffs if NEOCC gets sufficient inmates from other sources to replace those who are leaving.
“Our focus right now is on marketing that facility as aggressively as we can,” and helping any workers displaced from NEOCC fill vacancies at other CCA facilities, Burns said.
The specificity of Cooper’s letter to the mayor on March 24 contrasts with a comment made the same day by Steven Owen, CCA’s senior director of public affairs, in response to a Vindicator inquiry.
“We continue to assess what the staffing needs will be at the facility following the departure of BOP inmates,” Owen said then.
“Should a reduction in staffing levels be necessary, we will work closely with any impacted employees to ensure each has the opportunity to continue their career with CCA at one of our dozens of facilities around the country,” Owen added.
Burns said the difference in the statements may be due to their having been given at different times on the day CCA officials were deliberating what personnel decisions they needed to make.
Owen was out of the office Tuesday and directed inquiries to Burns.