Alden, N.Y. (WBEN) - An agreement was reached late Thursday night in mediation talks between the union representing state corrections officers taking place in a wildcat strike and officials in the State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS).
Among the terms in the agreement, HALT-related programming will continue to be suspended for 90 days, and if staffing levels fall below a certain threshold, HALT-related programming will cease for that day. The National Guard will also remain on site to help stabilize facilities as officers return to service.
The deal also includes changes to address staffing shortages and provisions to minimize mandatory 24-hour overtime shifts.
The New York State Correctional Officers and Benevolent Association (NYSCOPBA) encouraged its members to closely review the document, and is urging membership to accept the terms and return to work. The document will not be subject to a vote, as the strike was not sanctioned by the union.
It is now up to corrections officers individually to decide whether they are to return to work in the prisons.
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In Albany, Gov. Kathy Hochul and other officials hailed the agreement as a victory in the ongoing corrections officers strike at more than 30 prisons across New York State. However, to the corrections officers fighting for safer working conditions at these state-run facilities, the agreement is a slap in the face.
"The agreement was basically just a reiteration of last week's memo where she said she made a fair offer, and told us to get back to work. It's not a fair offer. There's nothing new in it," said one anonymous corrections officer with WBEN on Friday. "We know that we cannot get the HALT Act repealed, but we can make changes to it that allow us to do our jobs safely inside. And that's all we're asking, the confinement portion of it. If a guy assaults us, if an inmate assaults the officers or staff and he goes confined for 15 days, he complies with the program, he's right back into general population. It's a cyclical event. They just keep doing the same thing over-and-over, because there's no long-term punishment for it."
When it came time for the corrections officers to decide as a group on Friday whether they would accept the terms of the agreement from the mediation, the answer was a resounding, "No."
"From everyone that I've talked to so far, I think everyone is pretty much of the same mind. We came out here because of this HALT Act, it has made such unsafe work conditions for us. And from what I've seen in that agreement, that HALT Act isn't going anywhere, so we're not going anywhere either," said another anonymous corrections officer on Friday. "We're still outside, and we're still waiting for a better offer."
As another corrections officer pointed out on Friday, the only reason these prison guards went on their wildcat strike, in the first place, is due to unsafe working conditions across the correctional system in New York. And despite calls for help to Albany, no one responded appropriately.
"We had no other choice but to do this. The safety of the incarcerated individuals and our staff, civilians, has increasingly become more-and-more dangerous," he said in an interview with WBEN. "We've told [Daniel] Martuscello, our commissioner, we've reached out to all the politicians in the area. Every jail has, nobody has listened to us. We had no choice, our backs were against the wall. We had to take a stand, and for the first time, this department has come together."
For other corrections officers, they, too, have been surprised with the way the officers of the department have continued to fight as one.
"It's been really great to see. I've never seen us all united like this since I started," one corrections officer said. "I don't have that much time in, but it's really been amazing to see the community around us, as far as officers and families, as well as the community at large."
Corrections officers are tired of feeling like those in Albany know how to run a prison in New York, and all these COs are trying to fight for is more money.
"We were never here about money. In that agreement, they just kept throwing money at us like we're dumb. We read through this. We stated that from the beginning, we're not out here for money. We're writing our own paychecks in here. We just don't want to do that anymore, because staffing levels and the safety issue. We understand the inherent risks of this job, we took this job knowing that. But when the inherent risks are tenfold now, what becomes safe anymore? What is safe anymore? And the definition of Albany's safety is not our definition of safety. We deserve it. We're doing their work. They need us."
Despite this Consent Award being a legally enforceable agreement, several corrections officers are not deterred from continuing to protest and fight for their right to a safer work environment.
"Legally enforceable, yeah, under the Taylor Law, sure. But there's also a section of the Taylor Law that allows us to do this, if we can prove that the working conditions have become so unsafe. And we have the evidence to prove that with the amount of assaults on staff and inmates, by the way. The inmate-on-inmate assault is up almost 200% in just two years, coincidentally, when the HALT Act went into law. We didn't have these numbers prior to that at all. We have the evidence to show it. All these prisons have cameras in them. We've been wearing body cameras in some of these prisons for two years already. This isn't us. We haven't created this. This is bureaucrats not knowing what's going on."
In the end, corrections officers know that the proper resolution to this strike across the state is going to come down to Gov. Hochul stepping up and doing right by the state prison guards.
"She has the power to say, 'Alright, this is what we agree on. Get back to work. Nothing's going to happen.' She has that power. She has the executive power. She's offered us nothing. This is nothing. We're back out here, and we're going to be back out here, we're staying out here until there's a meaningful dialog where we all agree on the safety of prisons. We know prisons, we know how to run prisons. The politicians in Albany don't know how to run prisons. They have no business telling us how to run a prison, and what is safe and what's not safe."