ALBANY, NY (CNY Central) — The New York State Department of Corrections & Community Supervision has declared the strikes at correctional facilities over.
Commissioner Daniel F. Martuscello made the announcement Monday at a 5 p.m. news conference. Strikes began in mid-February at the Elmira and Collins Correctional Facilities and dozens of others later joined. The strikes lasted for 22 days.
Commissioner Martuscello said 10,000 security staff are working or available to work across the state; thousands of officers are now either terminated or chose to quit.
Under an agreement reached over the weekend between the state and the union representing the officers, which did not sanction these strikes, officers faced an ultimatum on Monday; return to work, or face legal consequences. The terms of the agreement were contingent upon 85 percent of striking employees to come back on Monday.
Martuscello announced this evening that the state fired about two thousand officers who did not return without a legal or medical reason. He said that the number of returning officers did not reach the 85 percent threshold, but he said that he would still be committed to finding solutions to officers’ grievances and staffing concerns.
This includes establishing a committee to review the HALT Act with programming provisions under that law suspended for 90 days. Officers have broadly blamed this legislation, enacted in 2022 to end inhumane solitary confinement practices, with a spike in inmates assaulting each other and officers. Those reports are controlled by the officers themselves.
“Time to recover. Rebuild. Recruit,” said Martuscello. “I want to thank the staff that have worked hard every day of this strike. Your being there was critical through these challenging 22 days.”
Officers returning from the illegal strike will not face discipline internally; however, Martescullo said that the state will enforce what’s known as the Taylor Law. Officers could be fined up to two days of pay for every single day they were on strike.
After nearly three weeks of hundreds of officers striking outside Auburn Correctional, it was a quiet scene outside the prison on Monday. The handful of officers that remained were packing up the wood they had used in fires to keep warm in the snow. One of them, Eric Wing, said that he made the decision to retire on Monday morning. He said dozens of others made similar choices, either retiring or resigning, unhappy with the agreement in front of them.
“I and many, many others though it was just a bunch of promises. It was a temporary fix for a problem that could be rescinded in 60 or 90 days,” Wing said.
Officers had remained on strike in defiance of a judge’s temporary restraining order which dictated that they must return to work. While the commissioner indicated that officers back at work will not face this kind of punitive action, it’s unclear whether terminated officers or those that chose to quit could face arrest.
Jared Cook, a labor and employment expert with the Tully Rinckey Law Firm, said that it’s more likely the state sticks to monetary punishments. Those punishments, including the Taylor Law, could still apply to officers who no longer have a job.
“It’s very unlikely that they would be arrest, [but] it’s conceivable,” Cook said, “They were still employed when this order was entered. They could be held in contempt of court.”
