Overtime payments to state workers have dropped to a level below what they were when Gov. Scott Walker entered office after they spiked during his first year as governor.

Walker and the Department of Administration said in a statement Tuesday these payments decreased 22 percent in 2012 from $63.1 million to the current $49.4 million.

Thanks to the reforms of Act 10, which repealed collective bargaining rights for most public employees, Walker said the state now has a concrete surplus. 

“2012 was the first full year that state government operated under the reforms contained in Act 10,” Walker said. “The structural reforms save taxpayers more than $1 billion including millions of dollars in state employee overtime.”

Walker said these cuts to overtime payments have improved the outlook for the state’s 2013-15 biennial budget, which is currently being debated by the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance.

The reduction in payment does not necessarily reflect less overtime put in by state workers, according to Marty Beil, executive director of the Wisconsin State Employees
Union. 

“The way that workers are compensated for work that would be paid as overtime has changed, but the amount of overtime work put in is actually the same as before,” Beil said.

Beil said the way state workers were compensated for overtime work prior to Walker’s repeal of collective bargaining rights for many public workers was called premium overtime. He said that system allowed workers to collect payments at one-and-a-half-times their standard hourly rate.

With the loss of collective bargaining rights, overtime payment rates that were once protected by labor agreements are now subject to change, Beil said. He added much of the overtime compensation that was previously paid at a premium time-and-a-half rate is now paid at standard salary.

DOA spokesperson Stephanie Marquis said a compensation strategy began in 2012 that mandated state employees to work at least 40 hours before becoming eligible to receive overtime.

Previous to this plan, she said a state worker could take a day off for vacation during the week and return to work on the weekend, earning time-and-a-half. But this is no longer possible, Marquis noted.

According to Marquis, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections produces the most
overtime payments because it must be staffed day and night, all year long. Overtime costs to the state dropped from $37.7 million to $29.1 million between 2011 and 2012, a 23 percent decrease, according to the statement from governor and the DOA.

The department has now changed its policy from offering overtime first to the most senior workers, whom happen to be the ones already making the most, to a rotating overtime schedule divided up equally among all employees.

Walker said he plans to make more spending cuts and further expand Wisconsin’s surplus to improve the function of state operations.

“I will continue to look for ways to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in government as we work to make our state operate as efficiently and effectively as possible,” he said.