New York prison guards fired for ignoring deal to end strike, thousands set to lose health insurance

New York officials have begun firing state prison guards who failed to abide by a deal to end their illegal labor strike, which has now extended into a third week.

The state’s homeland security commissioner, Jackie Bray, said terminations began on Sunday and that the state started canceling health insurance benefits on Monday for correctional officers who continue to strike as well as their dependents.

Fewer than 10 officers have been fired and thousands are slated to lose their health insurance benefits, according to Bray.

“None of these actions we take lightly,” Bray said. “We have tried at every turn to get people back to work without taking these actions.”

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On Thursday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a binding agreement between the state and officers’ union to end the strike. Under the deal, officers were required to return to work by Saturday to avoid being disciplined for picketing, as the labor action violates a state law prohibiting strikes by most public employees.

This comes as state police launched an investigation into the death of an inmate at one of the state’s prisons over the weekend.

Messiah Nantwi, 22, who was housed at Mid-State Correctional Facility, died Saturday at a hospital in the city of Utica.

Nantwi entered the state prison system in May and was serving a five-year sentence for second-degree criminal possession of a weapon in connection with a 2021 shooting involving police officers. Nantwi, who had been represented by the public defender’s office, was also awaiting trial in the shooting deaths of two men in 2023.

Officials have declined to provide additional details on what led to his death, but other inmates told The New York Times that Nantwi was brutally beaten by correctional officers.

“True, he was incarcerated, but he was still entitled, like all of us, to basic human dignity and safety,” Stan German, executive director of the New York County Defender Services, said in a statement. “Instead, he suffered a violent senseless death at the hands of state corrections officers operating within a toxic culture that our society mainly ignores.”

The corrections department said 11 staffers have been placed on administrative leave, pending the results of the ongoing probe into Nantwi’s death.

Mid-State is across the street from the Marcy Correctional Facility, where six guards have been charged with murder in the December beating death of Robert Brooks.

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Another inmate, 61-year-old Jonathon Grant, was pronounced dead last month after he was found unresponsive in his cell at the Auburn Correctional Facility amid the ongoing labor strike, although it is unclear if prison staffing played a role in his death.

The manner in which Grant died will be determined by a medical examiner. The public defender’s office that provided legal counsel to him expressed concern that the strike may have impacted medical care for inmates.

Officers began walking out on Feb. 17 to protest working conditions at the state’s prisons.

Jose Saldana, the director of the Release Aging People in Prison Campaign, said guards were striking as a “distraction” from the attention on inmate abuse.

“To put it more bluntly, guards are holding hostage tens of thousands of incarcerated people, whose basic survival needs are often going unmet, in order to demand even more power to harm those in their custody,” Saldana said.

The deal between the state and officers’ union to end the officers’ strike included ways to address staffing shortages and minimize mandatory 24-hour overtime shifts. The agreement also offers a temporary increase in overtime pay and a potential change in pay scale.

A 90-day suspension of a law limiting the use of solitary confinement was also included in the agreement. During the pause, the state must evaluate if reinstating the law would “create an unreasonable risk” to staff and inmate safety.

Hochul deployed the National Guard to some prisons to fill in for striking workers.

Corrections Commissioner Daniel Martuscello said Monday that the number of facilities with striking workers dipped from 38 to 32, although visits remained suspended at all state prisons.

“No matter when this ends or how this ends, our long-term plan must be and is to recruit more corrections officers because our facilities run safer when we’re fully staffed,” Bray said. “That work can’t really begin in earnest until folks return to work and we end the strike.”

Fox News Digital has reached out to New York Homeland Security and the officers’ union, the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.