Jean Keller, California Prison Nurse, Nets $270,000 Income Thanks To Overtime

In California, putting in the extra hours can apparently really pay off.

A California nurse working at a men's prison tripled her pay last year by working an extra 2,450 hours, Bloomberg reports. Jean Keller earned a total yearly wage of $269,810 in 2010, only a fraction of the $1.7 billion the state of California reportedly dished out last year in extra pay, including unused vacation time and union benefits.

On average, state workers are paid more than those in the private sector, making $58,340 in total pay last year, compared to an average income of $42,578 for employees working in both the public and private sectors, Bloomberg reports.

(Read the entire Bloomberg article here.)

By retirement, though, the income divide becomes less noticeable. A recent study found public sector workers had 11 to 18 percent more wealth by the age of 65 than couples in the private sector, according to the Sacramento Bee.

News of Keller's wages is just the latest evidence of California's problematic pay structure for state employees, especially those working for the prison system. LA Weekly reports that the five highest-paid government positions all work in the prison system, including the highest paid single public employee in the state last year, the head parole psychiatrist for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation who made $838,706.

Although the title of highest paid employee may be up for debate. The Los Angeles Times reports that the highest-paid state employee last year was actually a prison surgeon who made $777,423 in 2010 not working because he got two years of back pay while appealing a termination.

At the same time that some prison employees are raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars in pay, the state continues to grapple with a massive $19 billion budget deficit and officials recently warned some 26,000 prison workers of potential layoffs, adding them to the ranks of other less fortunate California state employees.

The structural changes are also expected to reduce the prison population by 30,000 over three years, according to the Associated Press.

Likewise, in March alone, about 19,000 public school teachers were laid off.

Yet the debt problem is real. California currently has the sixth-highest debt per capita of any in the country, at $3,060.

Distress among California workers isn't limited to the public sector alone, however. About 20,000 California nurses went on strike in September to protest proposed cuts to their health care benefits.

Comments

[SweetRN]

03:39 AM on 12/10/2011

Registered Nurses do not get paid enough for the work that we do! So congratulations for the nurse who made 270,000, nurses deserve every penny and more. Unless your an RN don't even comment, you have no clue to the hard work, commitment, compassion, and level of care we provide to our patients including prisioners. Without nurses hospitals/prisions/snfs would be over populated with patients and no one to care for them. Nurses deserve respect. We are educated individuals with bachelors, masters, and doctorates. Give nurses the respect they deserve......

[sparkydo]

08:28 PM on 11/20/2011

Would any of you want to go into a prison where murderers, rapists, and child molesters live? I think not. She deserves every penny she earned.

[Make up you own mind]

11:43 AM on 10/29/2011

I for one am tired of paying for people to be locked up for non-violent soft drug violations. The only people who benifit from the current prosecution of marijuana related offenses is the correctional system and suppliers including judges,lawyers and associated bottom feaders. Also oddly enought the main lobbiers for the status quo. And of course the burden is shifted to the taxpayer. If i have to pay it should be for rehabilation .

[Liv4ever]

06:58 AM on 10/29/2011

Fight teenage pregnancy at all costs. Less screwed up kids mean considerably lower social costs across the public service spectrum.

[Sandy Hammer]

07:44 PM on 10/28/2011

The unskilled oil workers in North Dakota are making hundreds of thousands. Don't hear anyone complaining about that.

[techguy24]

08:27 PM on 10/28/2011

because the taxpayers don't pay their salaries. The issue isn't how much they are making, but the fact that nurses that make far less are supporting their salaries.

[Sandy Hammer]

01:38 PM on 10/29/2011

Since Halliburton is the employer in SD, the taxpayers are paying the salaries in the form of huge oil subsidies and defense contracts sole sourced to the company. It simply flows through the back door and doesn't get the attention of the media.

[IPredictARiot]

06:53 PM on 10/28/2011

2,460 hours of OT? People, do a little math: A 50-week work-year, 5 days a week, 8 hour days is 2,000 hours. A 50-week work year, 6 days a week, 8 hours a day is still only 2,400 hours.

And that's her OVERTIME.

If you figure 1.5x for OT (that's the minimum, she was clearly working in the 2x range), she probably makes about $50/hr base.

Does anyone here have a serious problem with an experienced, probably late-career, educated nurse working in a prison system in an extremely expensive state making $50/hr base pay?

Anyone? Want to complain about someone else making a decent amount of money?

[techguy24]

08:30 PM on 10/28/2011

I do. she makes far more than the average private sector nurses. Private sector nurses shouldn't support her salary.

[pursang]

10:49 PM on 10/28/2011

Average private sector nurses don't have to work with violent criminals on a daily basis either so I would think the pay is warranted. You also don't know the education requirements of her position so again your claim that she's overpaid isn't based on fact but on assumption. Her position more than likely requires skills that are on level with an ER nurse but I'm assuming here as well.

Bottom line given the facts in the story, which is poorly written, it's impossible to say if she's overpaid. The fact that she can garner that much overtime is a problem though and it would be more cost effective to hire extra nurses to be paid straight time than to give one nurse so much overtime. With hiring freezes though you get situations like this and it's another problem caused by the kill off civil servants mentality.

[IPredictARiot]

01:13 PM on 10/29/2011

The mean wage for all nurses in CA is $42/hr (including nurses employed at hospitals and doctors offices and such - mostly private sector employees).

Given that this particular nurse is held up as the highest-of-the-highest-of-the-highest paid state employees, and probably is highly experienced and late-career, a payrate of $8 over the statewide average is pretty reasonable - in any industry, there are plenty of people making $8/hr over the state average, just as there are a lot of people making $8/hr under the state average.

Do you make more than 20% over the state-wide average for your industry? If you're good at what you do, I would hope that you would.

Face it, you just think everyone ELSE should be paid less because, for some reason, you have this egocentric opinion that you're underpaid because everyone else is overpaid. Your mommy told you that you were more special than everyone else, and now you want other workers' pay to reflect that. Call the Waaahmbulance. You think this nurse is overpaid, then become a nurse, be better than her, and take that job.

Once you put her hourly wage into perspective, it's totally reasonable. You try working more than double a normal workday every day for a year and see what you expect in return.

[knott wrench]

05:48 PM on 10/28/2011

If they had hired three other nurse, the "Base" pay would have been lower, but correspondingly, the accompanying Pension and Health benefits would have raised the costs.

Looks like a "Catch-22".

But it is excessive for one person to earn that much. Unless They worked on Wall Street.

What she earned was "Chump Change" compared to the CEO of Bank of America.

[jsern]

04:33 PM on 10/28/2011

This is a shame most schools don't even have a school nurse on site.

[oliver clothesov]

03:50 PM on 10/28/2011

when I think of dream jobs being a nurse at a mens prison always tops my list....

[ydnas639]

04:02 PM on 10/28/2011

That's why she gets hazardous duty pay.

[Mamadea]

03:10 PM on 10/28/2011

Looks like a staffing issue.

I'd also say, good for her/him!

[jagrmeister721]

03:50 PM on 10/28/2011

You must not pay taxes; or not pay very much.

[Mamadea]

10:45 PM on 10/28/2011

I pay plenty of taxes.

I also have a brain. Do you?

[pursang]

10:52 PM on 10/28/2011

She's working hard yet in this case conservatives get their panties in a wad because an average person is making a decent wage. It's also a sign of the times where hiring freezes cause staffing shortages which result in high overtime payments. Hire a few more nurses who are paid straight time instead of depending on overtime but until conservatives stop scapegoating the civil servants it won't happen.

[Kathy Kuenzl]

02:09 PM on 10/28/2011

I don't think not paying the nurse overtime for the hrs she worked is in question. She worked them she deserves to get paid. What it is really showing is how dumb the gov't is. Obviously they need a nurse on duty for x many hrs a day. So hire 2 nurses instead of 1 to work those hrs, hence you save money, no overtime pay required. Really not that hard to figure out but way to hard for anybody in the gov't to understand. To them it looks better on paper that they are only paying wages for 1 person:)

[pursang]

10:54 PM on 10/28/2011

It's not just government but the private sector as well. Hiring freezes cause these problems so your claim that it's government stupidity more than likely doesn't hold water. But keep blaming people instead of looking at the problem as a whole.

[StopMakingSense2]

01:38 PM on 10/28/2011

I'm sure the rubepublicans will introduce legislation to turn time and half in to just half time since this is an unreasonable burden on corporations and the average Joe is not supposed to get a break for toiling away endlessly..

[jagrmeister721]

03:51 PM on 10/28/2011

Yeah, cry me a river. God forbid people try to prevent this woman from making $270K for being a nurse.

[pursang]

10:58 PM on 10/28/2011

Heaven forbid we pay nurses a decent wage. Much better to pay a CEO or hedge fund manager 100 million dollars than pay someone who gives us care and support when we're sick or injured.

People are so jealous when an average person makes a decent living yet don't seem to care when a CEO gets tens of millions for little real work.

[ducky999]

10:39 PM on 10/28/2011

They did that already, back in 2004 when Pres Bush and then Sec of Labor Elaine Chow (sic) -Senator McConnell's wife, introduced and signed into law - ALL white-collar jobs could only be paid straight time. That those jobs were deemed 'Professional" and no matter how many hours you worked it must be straight time - only.

Police, firefighters and the nurses "unions" faught and threatened them so tough, they backed-off and allowed just those few critical white-collar jobs can get time-and a half, double/triple time over 40-hours. Like I said 'their unions' faught for this and won despite the Republicans having control of the House of Rep, the Senate, and the White House in 2004.

I know because I suddenly became a "Professional" after 15-years of working a decent middle-class white-collar career position as a salaried production supervisor in an American UAW automobile plant. I saw my pay get cut by a third annually while the "unionized" labor remained the same. We non-union salaried faught too, but only got straight time for any overtime hours if you worked the production floor - and only after a half hour of free 'comp-time' to set up before and close out after your shift.

I say 'BRAVO" to that female nurse. Make that money while you can, because Gretchin's Couch and its highly paid 1%-FoxNew salaried cohorts are surely going to get it cut off.

[excaderesdesire]

01:15 PM on 10/28/2011

I don't blame the nurse for management's staffing issues. I will say this: They would have saved lots of money with better staffing.

[oilfield]

12:20 PM on 10/28/2011

what a great country when a nurse is welcomed into the class of "rich".....sorry that you are now a target.

[greyhound2]

11:37 AM on 10/28/2011

Did you hear the one about the Los Angeles fireman who made even more money that the top boss? He did it by moving into the firehouse, living there 7 days a week and chalking it all up to overtime.

[oilfield]

12:21 PM on 10/28/2011

and saving money by not having a home..they should all do that.

[knott wrench]

05:50 PM on 10/28/2011

I don't recall reading anything like that in my Emergency Services Worker "Trade Publications" in Print or Online.

Do you have a link?