UNION SLAMS DESPERATE GAMBLE BY NYS TO END STRIKE BY PRISON GUARDS
NEW PROPOSAL WOULD CREATE A COMMITTEE TO STUDY PROPOSED REVISIONS TO THE HALT ACT, STRIKERS’ FIRST DEMAND BEFORE THEY RETURN TO WORK
EXCLUSIVE Mar 6, 2025
New York took a desperate gamble to end the record-setting 18 day strike by its prison guards on Thursday. It appears to be dead-on-arrival.
After striking guards declared their intent to stay on strike this morning, state prison officials re-packagaed a previously-rejected proposal and pitched it to guards directly in an extraordinary live webcast appeal Thursday evening.
The Free Lance obtained a copy of the proposed deal exclusively Thursday afternoon.
The deal is built on the ashes of the deal negotiated by the guards’ union that strikers rejected over the weekend.
The union that legally represents the guards, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Assosciation, or NYSCOPBA, rejected the state’s latest proposal in a news release late Thursday afternoon.
“At this time, NYSCOPBA will not be signing this agreement,” the group said. “NYSCOPBA was not appropriately engaged in the development of the currently circulating agreement.”
Thursday evening, the commissioner of the state agency that manages the state’s prisons, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, DOCCS, invited striking officers to break their union.
In his broadcast, DOCCS’ Commissioner Daniel F. Martuscello III said strikers who returned to work on Friday would be welcomed back with no consquences.
“It is predicated on them returning to duty tomorrow,” Martuscello said.
“We’ve agreed not to issue any formal Notices of Discipline,” he added, “to any employee who returns to work tomorrow.”
Martuscello said the new proposal derived from talks he and his prison superintendents had with striking guards directly.
“I solicited my superintendents to go out to the lines and offered to have conversations directly with me and those on the line,” he said. “They went back to the line, spread the word, and then got back to me with what would be required for them to return to duty.”
Striking guards say the HALT Act, which limits prison officials' ability to impose solitary confinement, is the main reason they’re striking.
The new proposal suspends “HALT programs” for 90 days. It would “immediately” create a committee of prison officials, guards and civilian prison workers to draft proposed changes to the HALT Act. They would have 60 days to do that, if the proposed deal is approved.
Once proposed chages are composed, presumably they would be submitted to the state legislature for consideration.
The deal’s proposed time-table would move proposed amendments to HALT out of the budget negotiations currently underway between Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state legislature in Albany. Under state law, the budget is due Apr. 1.
That, in turn, would make any proposed changes a long-shot. Sen. Julia Salazar, chair of the Committee on Crime Victims, Crime and Correction, which would have to approve proposed amendments, said this week that HALT should neither be repealed nor even amended.
Without the leverage the governor holds during budget negotiations, its not clear how Gov. Kathy Hochul, ultimately responsible for managaing New York’s prisons, could push amendments to the HALT Act through a legislature controlled by a super-majority of Progressive lawmakers from New York Cty.
Strikers have repeatedly rejected deals that do not repeal or at least amend HALT immediately. It remains to be seen whether the result will be different this time.
In addition to promising not to punish stikers if they returned to work tomorow, the state promises to withdraw the contempt lawsuit it filed seeking to jail and fine them “on the date they return to work.”
145 officers from 29 prisons have been ordered to face the music in a Buffalo court room Tuesday morning "for disobedience and/or resistance wilfully offered to the lawful mandate of the New York State Supreme Court."
The proposal also requires the National Guard remain detailed to New York’s prisons, to supplement Correction Officers, “until they are secure as determined by the governor.”
Finally, the proposed deal ends 24-hour mandatory shifts in favor of 12-hour ones, contains a “signing bonus” of 30-days’ double-time pay if the deal is approved, accelerated consideration of salary grade increases and revocation of a directive to every prison to plan for only 70% budgeted staffing.
Michael H. Sussman, who previously advocated for a faction of the guards, said he was not involved in the current negotiations.
NYSCOPBA, the guards’ union, said there are “outside parties interjecting themselves into negotiations on behalf of our members at selected facilities who continue to refuse to go to work. “
While It disavowed any involvement in the proposed deal, NYSCOPBA said it was still “actively working to engage DOCCS and New York State in reopening the Consent Award process with the mediator.”
“This approach,” it added, “would ensure that any resulting Consent Award is legally binding in court.”
A person close to Thursday’s dramatic, roller coaster events said they were a divide-and-conquer campaign by DOCCS and Commissioner Martuscello.
“Its been the hardest day of them all,” they said. “All day rumors of lines folding caused such fear and frustration.”
In the confusion, striking guards from all of New York’s prisons held a zoom call to organize around 3:00 PM. They held another at 4:45—to hold a roll call.
“Each prison’s name was called and they responded with their intentions,” they revealed. “Prison after prison responded… Holding!”
“Now there will be daily roll calls at noon!,” they added. “It’s easier to fight when you know you aren’t alone!”
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