Striking COs fired as state looks to end nearly two-week-long strikes

Yahoo

03-03-2025

Mar. 2—Corrections officers who have been on strike since mid-February were terminated en-masse Sunday, the latest step in a weeks-long back and forth between state officials and the staff they rely on to maintain order in the 44 state prisons across New York.
COs reached by the Watertown Daily Times on Sunday confirmed that those who were still on strike, demanding action to make state prisons safer and higher pay among other issues, received telephone calls or voicemails indicating their employment with the state Department of Corrections was finished.
It's not clear how many COs in total were terminated — DOCCS officials did not immediately return a request for comment sent Sunday afternoon.
COs striking Sunday said all their colleagues actively employed by the department who were on strike received the termination call in the morning, from regional prison leadership.
But in a social media posting earlier in the day, DOCCS Commissioner Daniel F. Martuscello, III, warned striking COs that they needed to return to work by Monday or their health insurance would be revoked retroactively to the first day they'd walked off the job, and no COBRA coverage would be available to bridge the insurance gap.
"My message to you is this is the final push," he wrote in a statement shared via X, formerly Twitter.
"Tomorrow, Monday March 3, anyone who remains on strike will have their's and their dependent's healthcare removed retroactive to the first day they were AWOL, and you will not be eligible for COBRA. I want you to come back to work today. If you missed your shift, you should still report and know that we will continue to have open dialogue on making facilities safer places to work."
Its not clear how the terminations and the insurance deadline will be combined — officers on strike Sunday said they did not have an idea of how the insurance penalties would be implemented.
The terminations on Sunday and insurance revocation Monday are the zenith of the state's actions against striking COs.
The first walk-outs in the wildcat strike, unsanctioned by the CO union, started Feb. 17, when COs at two prisons in southwestern New York walked out of their jobs — the strike spread to nearly all facilities by Feb 19.
COs have demanded pay raises, improvements in their pension plans, and safety regulation changes including mandated body scans for visitors and secure vendor programs for mail and packages sent to inmates. They've also demanded wholesale changes to the HALT Act, which restricts the use of solitary confinement and requires hours of rehabilitative programming for inmates each day.
Union representatives and state prisons officials met with a mediator through last week, negotiating on the demands — but because the CO strike is unsanctioned, the union has no power to unilaterally end the strike. Negotiations ended Thursday with a deal that made progress on some of the demands — but did not include requirements to body scan all visitors or get a secure vendor for packages delivered to facilities.
Additionally, the plan included some limited changes to HALT within the framework the law already permits — the DOCCS commissioner has the power to pause the programming-related requirements in HALT, which officials pledged to do for a 90 day review period.
The deal also outlined a safety committee and a commitment to pausing HALT programming on days when facilities are too understaffed to safely run the programs.
It gave striking COs a deadline to return to work as well — Saturday, March 1. Those who didn't return would be terminated or hit with civil penalties.
While on strike, the COs have been threatened with penalties under the state's Taylor Law, which restricts public employees right to stop work. Officials have threatened fines of double a day's wage for missed shifts, termination and legal action including potential arrests.
In the face of all that, they've continued their demonstrations at facilities statewide. It's not clear if those COs who were terminated Sunday would continue to demonstrate — some of those who spoke with the Times on Sunday said they would continue to demonstrate.
"We need to be heard, and things need to change inside these walls, even if I'm not in there anymore," one CO fired from Upstate Correctional Facility said. He requested anonymity to avoid potential legal repercussions, and said he was hoping he could restore his job at some point in the future.
Sunday's firings come at a difficult time for the state prisons — facilities have been running on low staffing models for months, and a recently issued and then repealed memo from Martuscello asked facilities to start working on a new staffing model that built-in a 30% force reduction from optimal operations. With at least several hundred COs now laid off from most facilities statewide, staffing plans will continue to rely on lower-than-normal headcounts. DOCCS officials are relying on 6,500 New York Army National Guard troops to maintain order in state prisons, and some officials have predicted they will continue to work in the prisons for six months to a year at least.