Court Reporters Picket For Their Future

On her lunch hour, Sotonye Otunba-Payne left her job and walked with her colleagues to New Haven Superior Court in a shirt reading ​“Integrity Matters.”

For 22 years, Otunba-Payne has been one of 200 court recording monitors in the state Judicial Branch paid to listen to recordings of court testimony and produce transcripts for litigants. Court recording monitors also supplement their income by selling transcripts to private parties, who pay more per page than the state.

Otunba-Payne is also a vocal member of the AFSCME Local 749 union, which represents workers at the Judicial Branch. The union was recently put on high alert when their employer announced plans to outsource the production of court transcripts and to phase out the sale of transcripts to private entities.

The Judicial Branch has submitted a bill to the legislature to allow it to start outsourcing court reporters’ jobs in 2021. It also distributed a memo to the court reporters and monitors announcing the future outsourcing plans.

State officials insist they’re not planning layoffs, that they will retrain court reporters for other jobs. The court reporters and their union, on the other hand, smell cost-cutting and job cuts.

So Thursday afternoon, members of Local 749 marched from 235 Church Street to the front steps of the New Haven Superior Court, the first in a series of five protests meant to pressure the Judicial Branch to reconsider its decision. 

The union members said they are fighting for their jobs and for the integrity of court transcriptions. Local 749 President Charles DellaRocco said that the union is concerned that the Judicial Branch has taken the first step in a process to begin a full-scale elimination of court recording jobs. He cited plans for outsourcing to begin in 2021, after the union’s collective bargaining agreement with the state expires and the transcribers have less protection from layoffs. 

Melissa Farley, the executive director of external affairs at the Judicial Branch, contested the union’s interpretation of the bill, calling it ​“patently false” and ​“disappointing.”

The outsourcing of transcription work is not meant to threaten the job security of court recording monitors but to conform to recommendations made in a 2018 report from the Auditors of Public Accounts, Farley said. Noting that the high cost of transcripts could complicate court proceedings for low income litigants, the Auditor’s Report recommended that Connecticut put a stop to the practice of state employees producing transcripts for private parties.

“We certainly don’t want to lay anyone off,” said Farley. ​“We value our employees and recognize that transcripts are critical to the court. All we wanted to do was address the problem of state workers earning private dollars on state time.”

Nevertheless, the court recording monitors themselves remain skeptical of the state’s claim that their jobs will remain intact. The first to speak at the protest was union member Kathy Darling, who stressed the valuable role that court recording monitors play in the legal process.

“We are not button pushers. We’re the conduit between every court proceeding and its memorialization,” she said. ​“Errors in transcription mean errors in history.”

Darling was followed by union members Susan Dikranian and Otunba-Payne, who predicted that errors in the record could have effects on the administration of justice and that outsourcing could compromise the quality of court transcriptions. Otunba-Payne referenced the drop in the quality of transcriptions in states like Massachusetts, which have already begun outsourcing transcription production.

“The work we do is an integral part of justice,” said Otunba-Payne from the courthouse steps.

DellaRocco finished out the protest by leading the assembled workers in a chant.

“Integrity does matter!” they shouted as passing cars honked in support.

As the protest concluded, the union members walked back the way they had come to 235 Crown.

“We have to go back to work,” said Otunba-Payne.