Dear DEA Members,
As you may know, our brothers and sisters in New York City’s Corrections unions are undergoing an extremely stressful and difficult time. This summer, results of a federal monitor found that there has been a “pervasive level of disorder and chaos” in New York City’s jails for years.
This past July 2021, the Corrections Officers Benevolent Association (COBA) filed a lawsuit over the inhumane, unsanitary, and decrepit working conditions at Riker’s Island and other City jails. Corrections Officers are being asked to work brutally long shifts in grossly filthy and dangerous conditions. The out-of-date prison facilities are highly overcrowded and physically deteriorating. The pandemic has taken its toll as well, turning the prisons into hotbeds of disease. Corrections Officers are being physically and sexually assaulted by violent inmates stuffed into overcrowded prisons. The plans made decades ago by then-Mayor Bloomberg to build new prison facilities have gone ignored for years and the City’s jail system is at a critical juncture.
Consequently, Corrections Officers are retiring in record numbers or are out sick as a result of the vile conditions they have been forced to endure.
The City recently filed a counter-suit against the Corrections unions in what we consider a retaliatory maneuver in their attempts to deflect the long simmering prison problems onto the backs of the working men and women entrusted with keeping our jails safe. Our City and State politicians and City leaders continue to be more concerned with the well-being of the violent, unruly inmates than with our Corrections Officers.
In the attempts to deflect the problems at Riker’s and other facilities, the City has started contracting private security firms to work at the jails in lieu of hiring more civil servants or fixing the facilities as asked by the unions.
As fellow uniformed City civil servants, the DEA considers the City’s actions of hiring private security an attempt to end-run the hiring of more City employees. We consider the hiring of private security forces to take the place of civil servants to be union-busting at its most basic, blatant, and dangerous core.
We are asking our members in the private security sector not to participate in this blatant attempt to circumvent the basic working rights of our fellow civil servants, and to turn down any offer to handle private security work for City jails. If you are the owner of a security firm, we are asking that you do not become a signatory to these City contracts as they violate the brotherhood of organized labor. The City’s attempt to circumvent its long-standing commitment to civil service is obvious. Just as we would not want this end-run to extend to law enforcement, we need to be fully aware that in these perilous times of economic hardship and anti-law enforcement and labor sentiment that we do not head down that looming slippery slope.
Organized labor in law enforcement and allied professions, such as Corrections, are being attacked by all sides. On the right, there is the long-standing, traditional disdain for organized labor and collective bargaining, and on the left, efforts to “defund the police” or eliminate us altogether are a threat to our very existence. We must be hyper-vigilant when we see attempts to dissuade, disband, or chip away at collective bargaining. Over the past decades, there has been an eroding of labor rights all throughout America.
This will and can affect the future of your rights, your benefits, and your pension as union members. Today, it’s COBA. Tomorrow, it’s the DEA.
In unity, there is strength. In division, we fall.
Therefore, we ask that all our members, both active and retired, ban together at this time to demand uniformed unions, such as Corrections, be treated with respect and professionalism. Please do not participate in the City’s attempts to bust the Corrections unions, and please do not enter into any private security arrangements with the City for prison work.
Fraternally,
Paul DiGiacomo and the DEA Board of Officers
