The Delco jail’s union issues a vote of no-confidence against the warden, seeks to oust her
The union asserted in a petition that Warden Laura K. Williams has retaliated against staff who speak out and failed to address mental-health concerns, among other issues.
Members of the Delaware County Prison Employees Independent Union this week passed a vote of no-confidence against George W. Hill Correctional Facility Warden Laura K. Williams, asserting her tenure at the county jail has led to dangerous working conditions and low staff morale.
Two of the union’s members, President Frank Kwaning and Albert Johnson, a guard at George W. Hill, announced the vote to the Delaware County Council at its meeting Tuesday night. Their announcement came with a petition to remove Williams signed by 541 people, including more than 300 current employees at the county jail, as well as members of the community and relatives of prison staff.
“For the past two years that the county has taken over the facility, there has been chaos,” Kwaning said at the meeting. “We are not telling the county how they should be running the facility, but what we will not be doing as a workforce is sit by unconcerned. This is unacceptable.”
Williams, 38, was hired to lead George W. Hill in February 2022 as the county prepared to take over managing the jail after decades of the facility being operated by The GEO Group, a private prisons firm.
The petition submitted this week lists 42 issues raised by the union’s members, including a lack of mental-health resources for workers, favoritism, and retaliation against employees who voice their concerns about management.
Understaffing remains an issue, the petition says, and there is a lack of emphasis on training.
“Ultimately with the vote of no confidence, the facility has a formula for disaster going now,” Johnson, one of the union members, said. “The county is investing a lot of money into infrastructure, and we don’t knock that.
“But it doesn’t matter if you’re investing that money if you have an administration that can’t retain staff,” Johnson added. “Not a single department there is happy with the warden and her abilities.”
In a statement, members of the county council said they “recognize that staff have expressed morale and communication issues within the facility” and that the union’s concerns are not unheard. The county pledged to investigate each allegation.
“Converting the last private prison in Pennsylvania to county control is a monumental task and represents a major staff and culture change for a large organization,” the council said. “Our goal is to work with staff and management to address legitimate concerns, and we have taken steps to do so.”
The council members noted that officials are continuing to address physical conditions and infrastructure at the jail, built in the late 1990s, budgeting a $40 million improvement project scheduled to begin in September.
They also said that the Pennsylvania Prisons Society recently gave George W. Hill a positive review, saying the facility had improved since its previous inspection in 2022.
“We believe George W. Hill is moving in the right direction and will continue that progress,” the council said. “We appreciate everyone that works there and will continue to listen and address concerns as they arise.”
The petition is not the first time that the union has spoken out about Williams.
Kwaning and the union’s vice president, Ashley Gwaku, filed a complaint with the state’s Labor Relations Board last year alleging their contracts were not renewed by the county as punishment for their involvement with the union. A judge ruled against them, saying the county was justified in its decision.
The two were later among a group of 15 former jail employees who filed a federal discrimination lawsuit accusing Williams of maintaining a “hit list” of people she targeted for firing. That case is ongoing.
Gwaku, in an interview, said that he and Kwaning had expressed their uncertainty about hiring Williams to county council in 2022, citing a class-action lawsuit filed in 2020 by former inmates of the Allegheny County Jail, where Williams previously worked as chief deputy warden of health care services.
In that suit, the former inmates said they were denied “appropriate and necessary mental-health care” and that excessive force had been used against them. A settlement in the suit has been reached and is awaiting a July hearing to be approved by a federal judge.
“If we had taken a different approach, a different lens of scrutiny, we wouldn’t be here today,” Gwaku said. “We didn’t want to see our officers in the same predicament as Allegheny County.”