After Janus Ruling, Cuomo Orders State Workers' Info Kept Private

NEW YORK, NY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday ordered state agencies to keep their employees' personal information private in an effort to protect them from anti-union campaigns — even though such privacy protections already exist in state law.

Cuomo's executive order followed the U.S. Supreme Court's Wednesday ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, which said that workers cannot be forced to pay collective bargaining fees to public-sector labor unions.

"The Janus decision is an attempt to break unions," the Democratic governor said during a news conference at his Manhattan office. "Here in New York we believe the exact opposite. We support the labor movement."

Under the order, state-controlled entities are barred from disclosing employees' addresses, personal phone numbers and email addresses to in response to freedom of information requests.

Employees' names, titles and salaries will still be made public, as New York's Freedom of Information Law requires. That law, as well as the state's Personal Privacy Protection Law, already protect against disclosures of information that would constitute an "unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."

Agencies can still release the personal details to public employee labor unions, the order says, or if the disclosure is legally required by a court order or subpoena.

In Janus, the court ruled that requiring public-sector workers to contribute so-called agency fees to support unions' collective bargaining violates the First Amendment. The decision was considered a major blow to organized labor in the United States.

Cuomo said his order aims to stop political groups from encouraging government workers to leave the unions that represent them.

"The evidence that we've seen from across the country is that union workers are being targeted — people are going to their homes, calling them at home, getting their cellphone numbers to try to convince them not to participate in the union," said Alphonso David, the governor's counsel.

Cuomo said he will propose legislation to impose the same privacy restrictions on local governments, to which his executive order does not apply.

The governor and labor leaders condemned the Janus ruling as a tool of President Donald Trump's right-wing political agenda. Cuomo has rhetorically targeted Trump, a Republican, as he's worked to raise his national profile recently.

"If his idea of freedom is just, 'Do what I tell you,' I know some people named Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin who he could have mentored everywhere he goes," said Danny Donohue, the president of New York's Civil Service Employees Association, referring to Trump.

(Lead image: Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order barring state agencies from releasing state workers' personal information. Photo by Mike Groll/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo)