1000s OF NY'S PRISON GUARDS DEFY DEADLINE TO END STRIKE, FACE MASS FIRINGS, ARREST
STRIKERS RISK BEING FIRED, ARRESTED FOR VIOLATING TAYLOR LAW, DEMAND REPEAL OF HALT ACT
Striking Correction Officers at Attica Correctional Facility, Saturday morning, Mar. 1, 2025. Photo credit: unknown, via source
Mar. 1, 2025
Thousands of New York Correction Officers rejected a proposed deal to end their wildcat strike and remained on picket lines for the 13th day.
The proposal failed “to address the root causes of the crisis that led to the strike,” a communique by striking officers at the Woodbourne Correctional Facility said on Saturday. Instead, it “weaponizes punitive laws against officers, while offering only temporary relief with no meaningful, long-term solutions.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul threatened to revoke the striking guards' health insurance and fire them if they continued their strike. The guards are also striking in defiance of a court order, and risk being jailed for contempt.
A spokesperson for New York’s prison system, Thomas Mailey, explicitly warned strikers in a statement released on Saturday: “the judge’s temporary restraining order remains in effect and they may be held in contempt of court.”
“Failure to return to duty ,” Mailey added, “will result in additional legal and administrative actions, including the immediate loss of insurance coverage, civil penalties for violating the Taylor Law, potential arrest and job termination.”
A civil rights attorney speaking for a faction of the strikers, Michael H. Sussman, said Saturday morning that Gov. Hochul "appears serious."
The state, Sussman said, "will likely begin to terminate employees who do not report back today as the agreement requires."
However, New York does not currently have the capacity to hold the thousands of administrative disciplinary hearings it would be legally required to hold if the guards’ contested their mass firings. That practical hurdle is in addition to the potentially dire impact it would have on an already-depleted, under-staffed workforce.
Strikes by all public employees are illegal under New York's Taylor Law. The striking guards face loss of two days' pay for every day on strike. State Attorney General Letitia James, who is suing more than 330 guards to get them to return to work, Doxed 25 last Wednesday.
“We’re getting treated like criminals," one striker told the Warwick Advertiser.
The strike started at the Elmira and Collins Correctional Facilities in western New York Dec. 17, The Free Lance reported. It spread like wildfire. 9 out of 10 guards at all but two of New York's 42 prisons went on strike.
To replace the striking guards, Gov. Hochul deployed more than 6,500 National Guard soldiers. Some were sleeping in cells. One said it was “Worse than Afghanistan."
The guards defied their own union to start the strike. Because of the Taylor Law, had the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, NYSCOPBA, sanctioned the strike, it could have been bankrupted by fines.
Nevertheless, with the approval of Gov. Kathy Hochul, NYSCOPBA represented the outlaw strikers in negotiations with the state that started last Monday in Albany. Martin F. Scheinman mediated the talks per agreement with both NYSCOPBA and the State.
Late Thursday night, Scheinman proposed a "deal" to end the strike in the form of a "consent award." But the deal won't take effect until the outstanding court order for the guards to return to work is "substantially complied" with, Scheinman said in a news release. He required strikers to return on Saturday, beginning with the first shift at 6:45 AM.
The proposed deal was ridiculed on social media almost from the moment it was trasmitted to the guards.
This reporter visited striking guards in front of the Upstate, Bare Hill and Franklin Correctional Facilities on Friday. The three prisons are clustered together near the Canadian border on the edge of a pine-covered plateau that forms the southern rim of the St. Lawrence River Valley. Waist-deep snow covered the ground.
Unlike previous visits, the atmosphere on Friday was tense. While strikers did not generally talk to reporters becase their strike is illegal, they previously weren’t hostile. Many talked anonmously. This time, a woman at the Upstate strike encampment asked this reporter to leave.
In front of Franklin, striking guards had previously greeted colleagues who stepped out of the prison for a break before going back to work inside. On Friday, there was no interaction between the two. A feud between them broke out on social media.
Late Friday afternoon, as the sun was setting on a bright but frigid winter day, striking guards from the three prisons gathered in front of the wind swept Bare Hill facility to vote on whether to continue the strike.
“We might lose some,” one said, “but we might gain some. Some of those who have been inside might come out and join us.”
Sign supporting wildcat strike by State Correction Officers on Route #11 in Malone, New York, outside of which are three state prisons. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
By Saturday afternoon, it was apparent that thousands of Correction Officers remained on strike, even if some returned.
About 20 returned to work at the Groveland Correctional Facility, one witness reported, “but all older about to retire.” At Coxsackie, a witness reported about a dozen guards returned only to quit.
Mailey, the prison system’s spokesperson, did not respond to a request to state how many gaurds had returned to work for Saturday’s first tour.
Strikers said in social media posts that guards at all 40 of New York’s 42 prisons that were previsously confirmed to be on strike remained on strike.
Witnesses verified strikes were continuing at the following facilities on Saturday: Adirondack, Albion, Attica, Auburn, Bare Hill, Cayuga, Clinton, Collins, Coxsackie, Eastern, Fishkill, Five-Points, Franklin, Greene, Governeur, Groveland, Orleans, Lakeview, Marcy, Mohawk, Mid-State, Otisville, Upstate, Wallkill, Washington, Wende, Woodbourne and Wyoming.
Because the proposed “deal” cannot be implemented unless striking guards “substantially” comply with a court order to return to work, the strikers appear to have torpedeoed it.
Sussman, the lawyer speaking for some of the strikers, said he'd asked Scheinman "that punitive action be placed on hold," but Scheinman had "not responded."
"They're about to take all kinds of punitive measures," Sussman revealed. "They're going to ruin the lives of thousands of working people. Is that really the solution?"
Meanwhile, state correction commissioner Daniel F. Martuscello III visited several prisons on Saturday.
“The Commissioner is stopping at facilities to thank those that continue to work, greet those returning, and encourage those who continue to strike to be part of the long-term solution by returning to their posts,” Mailey said.
Portable toilets at the camp of striking New York State Correction Officers across from the Franklin Correctional Facility. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
Strikers’ first and primary demand is repeal of a 2021 law they say has made their already-risky jobs unacceptably dangerous.
The law, called the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act, places a 15-day limit on the length of time prisoners can be placed in solitary confinement for misconduct. After that, they can be segregated from the general population but must be given rehabilitative programming and allowed 4-6 hours outside of a cell everyday in dedicated housing units.
Strikers say the HALT Act emboldened prisoners to break rules, prey on other prisoners and attack guards. If accurate, statistics appear to at least partially confirm their claims, but the methodology behind them is unexamined.
Assaults on prison staff jumped from 1,043 in 2019 to more than 1,938 in 2024, according to data published by the state agency that manages New York’s prison system, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. DOCCS also says Inmate-on-inmate assaults rose from 1,267 to more than 2,697 in those years.
Most of the assaults occured inside maximum-security prisons, but a growing proportion are occuring in medium security prisons, DOCCS’ data says. In 2019, there were 249 assaults-on-staff in medium-security prisons; in 2024, there were 693.
The increase mirrors an increase in the percentage of violent offenders incarcerated in medium-security prisons, according to the data.
The now-rejected deal suspended the HALT Act for 90 days but did not repeal it.
Repealing the law would require both the legislature’s and the governor’s approval. Last week, the senate’s Democratic majority rejected an attempt by members of the Republican minority to repeal HALT.
Sen. Julia Salazar, Chair of the Committee on Crime Victims, Crime and Correction, sponsored the HALT Act. Last week she said “HALT is the law. Long-term solitary confinement is torture and we don't want it in NY.”
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