It’s long past the time for the prison strike affecting several prisons across the state – including two locally – to come to an end.

There are ripple effects of these actions that reverberate across the criminal justice system – and we were reminded of just a few when Sheriff Jim Quattrone spoke during last week’s Chautauqua County Legislature meeting.

Striking corrections officers mean state facilities can’t accept new prisoners, which means county jails like Chautauqua County’s have to continue holding prisoners who should be transferred. That means more of your local tax dollars are being spent on jail inmates who should be sent to state custody. Having to use National Guard soldiers to help fill the gap left by striking corrections officers means more local overtime costs when county jail employees who are also National Guard members are sent away. Uncertain food delivery schedules add hassle and costs onto county jails.

Corrections officers have made their point. They brought the state to the mediation table and received a good chunk of what the officers said they wanted. For the next month, under the mediated agreement, overtime will be paid at a rate of 2½ times instead of the usual 1½ times regular pay. The state also agreed that within the next four months it will finish its analysis of a union request to bump the salary grade for officers and sergeants. The state is also going to suspend the HALT Act, which limits the use of solitary confinement, for 90 days while the state evaluates if reinstating it will “create an unreasonable risk” to staff and inmate safety.

The mediated settlement isn’t perfect. No mediated settlement is. Neither side is getting everything it wants. We also still don’t know how the state is going to boost employment in prisons so that the working conditions corrections officers are chafing under will be solved in the long term or how the state will square its progressive desire to end solitary confinement with the obvious safety issues the HALT Act has been creating inside prisons. Longer-term talks are needed on such points.

But the strike can’t continue while those talks happen. Given that the strike wasn’t authorized by the union and violates the state’s Taylor Law, the news that the state DOCCS is going to fire striking employees and eliminate their health care coverage if they weren’t back at work on Monday shouldn’t have surprised anyone. Eventually, the state was going to invoke the Taylor Law – and this strike has likely even weakened the hammer with which the state tries to ensure labor peace in the public sector. For nearly two weeks, corrections officers were able to strike in violation of state law with little consequence, and we’d be shocked if other public sector unions didn’t take notice of that fact.

Push has come to shove.