NY Prison Strike Helped Fuel $1.6 Billion in Overtime Pay in 2025

New York Public News Network | By Jon Campbell

New York state agencies spent more than $1.6 billion on overtime pay in 2025, marking a nearly 23% jump from the prior year, due in part to a corrections officer strike and ongoing staffing issues in the state’s sprawling prison system, according to a report released Thursday.

The state’s nearly 255,000 employees earned $1.6 billion while working nearly 26 million hours of overtime last year, which was $300 million more than 2024, the report from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found.

But an outsized portion of that spending came from the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, whose workforce has plummeted in recent years. The agency also temporarily boosted its overtime rate for corrections officers to 2.5 times their normal pay as it contended with an illegal three-week strike at its 42 prisons last year.

State workers are generally paid 1.5 times their regular pay for hours they work beyond their regular 40-hour workweek.

Nicole March, a spokesperson for the corrections department, said the agency has aggressively expanded its recruiting efforts with hiring and retention bonuses, among other incentives. She pointed to last year’s strike and said staffing shortages “place a burden on the dedicated staff who report to work and carry out their duties professionally.”

“As staffing improves, we expect to reduce reliance on overtime while maintaining safe and secure facility operations,” she said in a statement.

DOCCS employees logged 8.7 million hours of overtime in 2025, accounting for $709 million — or 44% — of the state’s total overtime spending, according to the comptroller’s report. This marked a 58% increase in overtime pay and 17% increase in hours for the agency compared to 2024.

The wildcat strike — which wasn’t officially sanctioned by the officers’ union — resulted in more than 2,000 officers being fired, further exacerbating the agency’s ongoing struggle with attracting and retaining staff. The agency’s head count dropped from roughly 30,000 in 2016 to 20,000 last year, according to the comptroller’s report. Fifteen state prisons closed in that same period.

Overtime hours for the average DOCCS employee had skyrocketed even before the strike — from 220 in 2020 to 325 in 2024 to 432 last year, the report found.

“These combined factors indicate that a smaller pool of corrections employees are working substantially more overtime hours to meet operational demands,” DiNapoli’s report states.

Chris Summers, president of the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association union, said the comptroller’s findings came as no surprise “given the ongoing staffing challenges facing our prisons.” He said the agency’s recruiting efforts have been “”unsuccessful in addressing the staffing shortfall.”

“We have repeatedly stressed that the current system is unsustainable,” he said in a statement. “Our members are without a work-life balance due to mandated overtime, and many have opted to retire or resign as a result.”

DOCCS, meanwhile, said it has seen an 155% increase in people taking the correction officer exam since launching its recruiting blitz.

Among the rest of the state workforce, the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities and Office of Mental Health accounted for the next biggest shares of overtime spending last year, at $230 million and $201 million, respectively. Both agencies manage institutional settings and have long struggled with staffing, much like the prison system.

The overtime spending marked a 14% increase for the Office of Mental Health compared to 2024, and a 2% decrease for the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities.

Image: People protest Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025, outside of Woodbourne Correctional in Sullivan County. (Patricio Robayo/Radio Catskill)