A U.S. Labor Department investigation into alleged illegal tampering with correction workers’ payroll records unearthed disturbing news. Numerous complaints against the state, representing corrections workers, claimed that the workers were being swindled out of pay due to them.

The impacted workers were cheated out of their fair payments due to their hours being tampered with at the beginning and end of their shifts.

In a dramatic turn of events, Maryland agreed to pay over $13 million in a settlement to resolve unpaid wages to workers. The decision for the settlement arrived after the U.S. Labor Department completed its investigation, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Maryland (AFSCME) Council 3 received word of the results in the report.

This agreement follows on the heels of the numerous complaints against Maryland, with a lawsuit representing workers saying they were swindled out of pay due to tampering of their time records, without their knowledge or permission.

Maryland Governor Wes Moore serves as the chair of the Maryland Board of Public Works. He announced that the Maryland Department of Corrections and Public Safety did indeed violate numerous federal wage laws by failing to pay overtime to 3,874 current and former correctional officers.

“While the Department of Labor’s investigation is still ongoing, the one thing that we know is for certain: the federal government found that thousands of dedicated and hardworking employees were underpaid for hours of work they performed at the department,” Governor Moore said.

Governor Moore said the period of the illegal labor violations occurred over three years, between 2018 to 2021.

The Maryland governor said the state will pay back all employees their missing wages, “as well as any others that we uncover in other departments as well.”

The state will work with the Maryland AFSCME to assist workers with their missing payment issues.

Patrick Moran, president of AFSCME Maryland Council 3, said he is thankful for the Governor’s assistance, but that the previous administration was not helpful in resolving the issues.

Moran said that the settlement reflects “the second largest wage-theft settlement for correctional officers in United States history,” and that “People need to be held accountable because they stole employees’ money. They thought that people working for free was acceptable. It is not acceptable ever in any situation.”

The individual payouts will vary among employees, based upon whether their work hours were rounded up or down by the department and also when they actually punched in and out on their timecards, which had been tampered with prior.

The agreement stipulates that all state-run correctional facilities in Maryland are covered under the new settlement.

Correctional officer Sergeant Dorian Johnson, who works at the Chesapeake Detention Facility, said the settlement is great news.

“This news is a big step for us to be able to move forward with the pay that we know we are entitled to after constantly being told we weren’t,” said Johnson. “We’ve faced understaffing, constant changes in policies, and mental and physical stress in this job. This money is long overdue.”