By Hank Russell
For political candidates, especially in New York, the most important endorsements they can receive are from labor unions. In an effort to garner their support, they will usually paint their opponent as anti-union or against working families.
The New York State Democrats and local labor unions recently employed this tactic against Nassau County Executive and GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman, who is running against incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul. They refuted Blakeman’s claim that he has “great labor relations in Nassau.”
On a recent Suffolk County Police Department’s podcast On Patrol, Blakeman noted that Hochul — whom he called “very anti-law enforcement” — fired 2,000 state correction officers “and that was a very drastic measure on her part.
When asked how he handles union contracts, Blakeman explained that, when he first entered office, the Nassau PBA was without a contract. “They had a beef about longevity, so we gave them a contract that was approved,” he said. “I gave them longevity, so I have great labor relations in Nassau County, and I think that’s very important.”
He also criticized former New York City Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg for its “zeroes for heroes” policy, in which members of the New York City Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association had to forfeit their retroactive pay and contribute to their health plans because of a looming budget deficit.
“You don’t balance a budget on the backs of your workers,” Blakeman said. “You can’t give them [unions] everything they want. Everybody knows that. It has to be reasonable. That’s what negotiations are all about — being able to bargain, to negotiate and eventually coming to a middle ground, where everybody doesn’t get everything they want, but they get enough that they’re satisfied.”
However, the NYS Democrats cited a 1999 New York Times article that, as presiding officer, Blakeman supported a plan that would lay off 500 county workers before Christmas if the labor unions did not agree to $20 million in concessions. ‘The alternative is that if they do not do a lag payroll,” he told the outlet, ”the county executive is coming here, as he stated, at 2 o’clock on Wednesday with a layoff plan, which I, regretfully, would have to support in order to avoid bankruptcy for this county, which would have implications far beyond the pain that would be inflicted by the layoffs.”
State Democrats also noted that, in 2024, Blakeman was sued by the Civil Service Employees Association, Inc. (CSEA) over a proposed new healthcare plan that the union said would be more costly and unaffordable. A court ruled in favor of the CSEA.
“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,” said CSEA Long Island President Jarvis Brown.
In response, 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.”