XPost: alt.society.labor-unions, alt.politics.trump, sac.politics   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns, ny.politics   
   From: yourdime@outlook.com   
      
   Gov. Kathy Hochul threatened on Tuesday to use the National Guard to   
   ensure the safety of New York’s prisons after wildcat strikes by   
   corrections officers spread to more than half of the state’s 42   
   penitentiaries.   
      
   The threat was a response to labor actions that began on Monday with   
   officers assigned to two upstate prisons refusing to come to work to   
   protest staff shortages and other conditions. By Tuesday, strikes had   
   emerged at 25 prisons, state officials said.   
      
   The officers’ union said it had not authorized the job actions, and Ms.   
   Hochul, calling them “illegal and unlawful,” said she was considering   
   forcing the officers back to work by invoking a state law that prohibits   
   most public employees in New York from going out on strike.   
      
   “We will not allow these individuals to jeopardize the safety of their   
   colleagues, incarcerated people and the residents of communities   
   surrounding our correctional facilities,” the governor said in a   
   statement.   
      
   The strikes, the first widespread work stoppage in New York’s prisons   
   since a 16-day walkout by officers in 1979, come as the state correctional   
   system faces close scrutiny stemming from the fatal beating of a 43-year-   
   old inmate by officers in December.   
      
   Criminal charges are likely to be announced on Thursday against at least   
   some of the officers and other corrections department employees whom state   
   officials have implicated in the killing of the man, Robert Brooks, at   
   Marcy Correctional Facility near Utica.   
      
   The attack on Mr. Brooks, who had been serving a 12-year sentence after   
   pleading to first-degree assault in the stabbing of a former girlfriend,   
   was captured on several officers’ body-worn cameras. The footage shows   
   some officers punching, kicking and violently grabbing Mr. Brooks, who is   
   shackled and handcuffed, while others look on.   
      
   Two weeks after Mr. Brooks’s Dec. 10 death, Ms. Hochul ordered the state   
   corrections commissioner to suspend those implicated in the attack — 16   
   corrections officers and two nurses — as a step toward firing them. Two   
   officers have resigned.   
      
   Like Ms. Hochul, the commissioner, Daniel F. Martuscello III, and the   
   union representing officers, the New York State Correctional Officers &   
   Police Benevolent Association, were in harmony as they both condemned the   
   deadly assault on Mr. Brooks.   
      
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   The Times Union of Albany reported this month, however, that the union had   
   issued a vote of “no confidence” in Mr. Martuscello, in part because a   
   reduction in the number of officers has forced the union’s members to work   
   overtime in increasingly dangerous conditions.   
      
   Anger at the commissioner appears to have increased after he issued a memo   
   to prison superintendents last week in which he said the department would   
   have to get by with 70 percent of its typical work force because of the   
   persistent staff shortages.   
      
   The striking officers, whose current three-year contract runs through   
   March 2026, refuse to accept the smaller force as permanent, and   
   increasing its size is among their demands.   
      
   Another major point of contention is a state law that took effect in 2022   
   and strictly limits who can be placed in solitary confinement, for what   
   reason and how long they can be kept there.   
      
   When it was passed by the Legislature, the law was hailed as a   
   groundbreaking measure that would fundamentally change life for people   
   behind bars. But the officers’ union has said that the restrictions   
   endanger them and incarcerated people alike, and the strikers are   
   demanding that the law be reversed.   
      
   When the first picket lines began to form at the Collins and Elmira   
   correctional facilities on Monday, a union spokesman said the actions were   
   “not in any way sanctioned” by the group, and those who had failed to   
   appear for their shifts were doing so “as a result of their discontentment   
   with current working conditions.”   
      
   The State Police said on Tuesday that they were assisting the corrections   
   department by providing “outer perimeter security” at some prisons where   
   officers were striking.   
      
   Jennifer Scaife, the executive director of the Correctional Association of   
   New York, a state prison oversight group, said officers at prisons across   
   the state had complained to the association of regularly having to work   
   16-hour shifts.   
      
   Such schedules were “unsustainable” and a sign of “crisis” in the prison   
   system, she said. But she also noted the strikers were demanding things   
   the governor could not provide unilaterally in a way that did not “serve   
   the union’s interest either in the short or long term.”   
      
   Prisoner rights’ groups criticized the strikes. One accused strikers of   
   trying to divert attention from the death of Mr. Brooks. Others warned   
   that the actions were putting thousands of inmates at risk, causing them   
   to go without meals, medications and programming.   
      
   Attica Correctional Facility was among the prisons targeted by strikers on   
   Tuesday and one of eight where corrections officials suspended visitation.   
      
   Khadijah Shakur, whose son is incarcerated there, said in an interview   
   that he had told her on Tuesday that he and other prisoners were given no   
   meals until 1 p.m., when they received a small box of bran flakes, an   
   apple and milk instead of a full meal in the prison cafeteria.   
      
   “He said, ‘Mommy, there’s nobody in here,’” Ms. Shakur said. “People are   
   concerned.”   
      
   https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/nyregion/ny-prisons-strikes-national-   
   guard.html   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)