The union representing Federal Prison Bureau employees and other federal staff on Monday filed suit against the government, alleging the workers deserve extra hazard pay for being exposed to the coronavirus while having to show up to their jobs.

An Oregon worker is among the five plaintiffs in the case -- he works as a diagnostic radiology technologist with the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System in Portland.

The class action complaint alleges federal employees have been working in close proximity to people and surfaces infected with the novel coronavirus without sufficient protective gear since Jan. 27 and continue to do so.

Oregon has one federal prison, in Sheridan, with 1,823 inmates. It has no reported cases of the new coronavirus so far.

The suit, filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., follows the first death Saturday of a federal inmate stemming from COVID-19. Patrick Jones, 49, was the first inmate in the Federal Bureau of Prisons diagnosed with the the virus and had been in custody at the Federal Correctional Institution in Oakdale, Louisiana.

Three of the plaintiffs who brought the suit work at the same low-security federal prison for male inmates about 110 miles northwest of Baton Rouge.

Last Thursday, one of the plaintiffs, Aubrey Melder, a correctional officer at the prison in Louisiana, was told to take an inmate to the hospital. When he asked his supervisor if he needed a mask, he was told no.

The prison didn’t provide him protective gear except gloves, the suit says. He only got some limited gear from outside hospital workers after he traveled in a van with the inmate and sat in a hospital room close to the inmate, who tested positive for COVID-19, according to the suit.

On March 8, the suit also alleges that plaintiff Jason Phillips, the technologist with the Portland veterans system in Portland, performed a procedure on a patient infected with COVID-19, though he wasn’t apprised of the patient’s condition beforehand, the suit says. Phillips also only wore gloves, no other protective gear, the suit says.

“Federal employees are risking their lives and the lives of their families every day when they leave their homes. As just one example, federal prisons are already dangerously understaffed, and now they are a petri dish for COVID-19. Yet, tens of thousands of Bureau of Prisons employees are still showing up to do their job every day,” said Heidi Burakiewicz, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs.

As of March 27 in the Louisiana prison, nine inmates and seven staff members have tested positive for the new coronavirus, 15 inmates were admitted to outside hospitals, 68 inmates are in quarantine and 23 are in isolation because they’re suspected of having COVID-19, according to the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, which represents the prison staff and other federal employees.

Despite this, the prison didn’t lock down the inmates in their cells until March 21.

“That means that the almost 1000 inmates at FCI Oakdale have been going to their work assignments and going to the dining hall for their meals, despite COVID19 running rampant in the institution,’’ according to a statement from the union’s attorneys.

The suit seeks a 25 percent hazard pay differential for these workers, arguing that they’re being exposed to hazardous working conditions.

Oregon’s Federal Public Defender Lisa Hay said she’s dismayed that federal authorities in Oregon are arguing in court that Sheridan is not yet proven to be unsafe, when she continues to hear about the lack of social distancing or protective measures from the Columbia County Jail to the federal prison in Sheridan. Defendants facing federal charges are among those housed at the county jail.

She has accused federal authorities of “willful ignorance.’’ Inmates sleep in dormitories and eat in cafeterias where keeping 6 feet of distance isn’t possible, she said.

She said she’s heard from inmates and others that inmates are arriving at the federal prison in Sheridan from the Columbia County Jail or from a detention center in Pahrump, Nevada, and then quarantined for 14 days but in cells where the air vents to the general population. There’s not a bubble of containment, she said.

“What bothers me is too many people in the criminal justice system are taking an ostrich head-in-the-sand approach, when we’re just weeks away from a public health crisis. We should be doing something,’’ Hay said. “It’s just a matter of time before one of the guards or a prisoner brings it in and it’s going to get out of control.’’

Earlier this month, Hay filed a separate motion, urging the compassionate release of a 79-year-old inmate convicted of defrauding investors who has diabetes. Other federal inmates have filed separate motions for release, citing their chronic health conditions that make them susceptible to COVID-19.

The American Civil Liberties Union also Monday continued to urge President Donald Trump and governors across the country to release people from prisons and jails, particularly those who are elderly or have chronic health conditions that make them susceptible to COVID-19.

"The tragic death of Patrick Jones over the weekend — a man incarcerated for a drug offense but handed a death sentence due to his incarceration — highlights that every day that passes without action puts thousands more at risk of getting sick or dying,'' said Udi Ofer, director of the ACLU’s Justice Division, in a prepared statement.

There are currently 175,000 people in about 100 federal prisons across the country. The U.S. Marshals Service is responsible for another 75,000 people who are in custody awaiting trial in either local jails or private contract detention centers. Roughly 12 percent of prisoners are 55 or older, according to the prisons bureau.

As of Monday, 28 federal inmates tested positive for COVID-19, and 24 staff tested positive, according to the federal Bureau of Prisons.

The Bureau of Prisons website said it has taken steps to combat the spread of coronavirus, including screening all new inmates for COVID-19 risk factors and symptoms, quarantining asymptomatic inmates with higher-risk exposure factors and isolating inmates with symptoms.

The other plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Brenda Braswell, an Food and Drug Administration consumer safety inspector who works in Pine Bluff, Ark.; Jerrod Carrier, a maintenance worker at the federal prison in Oakdale and George Guice, a food service foreman at the federal prison in Oakdale.

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212

Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian

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