The state is turning the legal screws on striking correction officers, as tensions flare inside out-of-control New York prisons and workers picket outside them.
State troopers began serving union members out on strike illegally with summons over the weekend as hundreds refuse to comply with last week’s court order instructing them to return to work.
“We’re not working for threats, we’re looking for help,” Rebecca, the wife of an Albany-area correction officer, said alongside state Senate Republicans at a press conference in the Capitol Monday.
Rebecca declined to share her last name out of fear of reprisal by the state corrections department.
Monday marks the eighth day of picketing, which violates New York’s Taylor Law banning public sector unions from striking.
The corrections department continued negotiating with a state-appointed mediator and the union for correction officers on Monday.
A spokesperson said the talks remain “ongoing.”
But the corrections department is also threatening to cancel health care coverage and dock pay for officers on strike.
Meanwhile, thousands of National Guard members have been deployed to the prisons. Sources suggest the situation is deteriorating inside with prisoners in understaffed facilities being confined to cells.
An inmate was found dead in his cell over the weekend at Auburn Correctional Facility in Cayuga County, one of the prisons impacted by the strike. Authorities have yet to release a cause of death.
State police released photos of a bus used by the corrections department that was torched last week. Another was graffitied with the message, “can you hear us now.”
It’s unclear whether a deal brokered between the correction officers’ union and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration would even end the strike.
The correction officers union has maintained it doesn’t condone the strikes.
Brigett, another wife of a correction officer who joined the Senate Republicans Monday, called the union out of touch with its membership.
“The officers have lost trust in our union with making these negotiations. … The union hasn’t been showing they have our backs, honestly,” said Brigett, who did not provide her last name.
But Republicans in both houses of the state Legislature continues to show support for the picketers during joint press conferences Monday but weren’t willing to offer any advice.
Asked by The Post whether they think officers should continue to strike in the face of legal action, neither Assembly Leader Will Barclay (R-Oswego) or Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt (R-Niagara) weighed in.
“I don’t have great advice for them. They have to make their own personal decision on that,” Barclay said.
“It’s easy for me to say, ‘you stay out there and you fight it,’ but it’s not my health insurance, it’s not my kids, it’s not my family. And so what I want, the commitment we have to make, is to fight for them so that they can be strong,” Ortt added.
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