By Hank Russell
With Election Day six months away, Governor Kathy Hochul and GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman have each proclaimed their support of labor unions, while, at the same time, they have accused each other of turning their backs on the workers.
According to the New York State Democratic Party, Blakeman — who is also Nassau County executive — “has a track record” of being anti-union. The party cited a New York Times article from 1999, when Blakeman was the Nassau Legislature’s presiding officer, in which then-County Executive Tom Gulotta demanded that the unions agree to $20 million in concessions or else there would be 500 layoffs. The only option was a “lag payroll,” which, according to the article, workers would be paid for nine out of 10 days for 10 weeks; once they leave their jobs, they would receive the other 10 days of missed pay.
Blakeman was quoted by the Times as saying that he would “regretfully” support the layoffs if the unions did not agree to a lag payroll “in order to avoid bankruptcy for this county, which would have implications far beyond the pain that would be inflicted by the layoffs.”
The NYS Democrats also pointed that, as county executive, in 2024, Blakeman attempted to force the state’s Civil Service Employees Association’s (CSEA) 4,000 county employees off their current health plan and onto a high-deductible health insurance plan. According to Newsday, CSEA sued the county executive to get back on the original plan and won.
At the party’s “The Cost of Bruce Blakeman” tour in Mineola last week, CSEA Long Island President Jarvis Brown said, “If Bruce Blakeman is willing to place the high cost of health insurance on the backs of CSEA retirees and active members, who are among the lowest-paid Nassau County workers who keep this county running every day, there is no reason to believe he would treat workers across the state any different.”
“Bruce Blakeman has spent his entire career attacking workers: trying to fire them, blocking their time off, and making every effort to gut their healthcare,” NYS Democratic Party spokesperson Addison Dick added. “Blakeman’s campaign for governor is all about bringing ‘Trump-style leadership’ to New York, and that includes an extreme anti-labor agenda that puts New York workers last.”
But on his May 6 Get Up & Tighten Up podcast, host Norman Seabrook pointed out to Blakeman that Hochul “didn’t lay off, [but] fired” 2,000 New York State correction officers who went on strike and spent $500 million “to get the National Guard to come and stand on the outside of the facilities … When you fired 2,000 correction officers, you fired their families as well.”
Blakeman said he hired an additional 200 correction officers and is “continuing to hire more correction officers.” He accused Hochul of “creating an environment where it’s unsafe in our jails for not only the correction officers, but the prisoners [as well].”
When Seabrook asked Blakeman if he would allow municipalities to “take away these benefits these men and women so rightfully fought for, deserved and received” to balance the budget, Blakeman said no. “I’ve never balanced my budgets on the backs of my municipal workers. Yes, we negotiate contracts vigorously. Management and labor are supposed to do that.”
The county executive also noted that he “had four successful labor negotiations that didn’t take years. We got it done expeditiously and we have union peace in my county because I understand it’s a negotiation process. Yes, you have to negotiate hard, but you have to come to a reasonable solution and a reasonable compromise contract.”
“I understand that collective bargaining is an important part of labor relations and I’m a big proponent of that,” Blakeman continued. “I love [my workers] and I nurture them and I appreciate them.”
In a statement to LILP, Blakeman said, “Kathy Hochul has betrayed New York’s union workers at every turn — hiring scabs instead of standing with nurses, firing thousands of correction officers, mismanaging the Empire Plan and leaving Nassau CSEA members with a coverage crisis, all while turning her back on transit workers facing rising danger on the job. Unlike Kathy Hochul, I’ll always stand with New York’s working men and women, not the politicians who sell them out.”