New York Corrections Officers on Strike
By Richard Miller
(Buffalo, NY)- New York corrections officers at prisons across the state went on strike on February 17th, 2025. Officers claim to be working in unsafe conditions. Thousands of National Guard members were deployed to cover the prisons while the strike went on. Many corrections officers lost benefits and 2,000 were ultimately fired as a result of the illegal strike. New York Governor, Kathy Hochul barred those fired officers from ever working in a New York State job again. She said, “There is no justification to break the law in the state of New York and they need to get back to work because they have created a dangerous situation for the other corrections officers who lived up to their duty and their oaths and the law.”
In this episode of Broadcasting Buffalo, Host Mike Igoe discusses the strike with retired State Supreme Court Judge Penny Wolfgang, Defense Attorney Robert Fogg and Jerome Wright, who is a former inmate who founded the #HALTsolitary campaign. Becca Kupczyk took a closer look at the HALT act, which many corrections officers claim led to their unsafe working conditions. Caleb Babula spoke with a retired corrections officer and a former inmate about the strike.