The illegal 22-day strike by state correction officers and correction sergeants impacting nearly all 42 prisons in the state ended the way it had to: with more 2,000 illegal strikers fired Monday when they didn’t report for duty by 6:45 a.m. deadline that morning.
We take no joy in the necessary action by Gov. Hochul and Department of Corrections and Community Supervision Commissioner Daniel Martuscello, but the firings had to happen and Hochul is also justified in banning all these lawbreakers from being hired for any state service job.
In New York State, public employees have the right to organize and bargain collectively for wages and benefits and working conditions. Their unions can be funded with dues collected from government paychecks. The employees also receive very generous health care coverage for themselves and their spouses for life and guaranteed pensions, something that rarely exists anymore in the private sector. In exchange, they cannot strike.
That is the bargain, and it’s written out in the state’s Taylor Law.
That the union didn’t authorize the walkout made it a wildcat strike, but it was still illegal and would have been just as unlawful if the union, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, had called it. In that case the union would have been punished with hefty fines and a loss of the dues checkoff. Under the law, individual strikes are being dunned twice their normal days’ pay for every day they failed to report for duty. But for those who didn’t meet Monday’s deadline, their government employment has ended.
Hochul’s executive order also recommends these former officers and sergeants should have their names excised from the Central Registry of Police and Peace Officers for cause. That would bar them from being hired as cops throughout New York State. Harsh, yes, but their violation was severe and they had plenty of warnings.
Two days after the start of the walkouts on Feb. 17 at two prisons, a binding court order was issued commanding everyone to return to work. That was ignored as the strike spread. The union leadership tried to broker a deal with Hochul, but that was ignored.
Republicans serving in Congress and the state Legislature, who always tout law and order, shamelessly sided with the lawbreakers. That they don’t like Democrat Hochul is understandable, but New Yorkers should not forgot not their hypocrisy about supporting a blatantly illegal action harming the public welfare.
The striking officers and sergeants had complaints about limitations on the use of solitary confinement, but the timing of the walkout was also just as six officers that Hochul had fired for killing inmate Robert Brooks on video in December were charged with murder and three others were indicted for manslaughter. Those former officers will have their day in court for the crimes they have been charged with.
Was the illegal wildcat strike somehow supposed to take attention away from the trial? Perhaps, but the strike is over and the prosecution continues.
As for the 2,000-plus former officers who were fired for striking, they learned the painful lesson that laws matter and the no-strike provision for public employees means exactly that. Hochul did the right thing.