A public sector union in Rochester has spent the past 14 months fighting for recognition from a mayor who is required under city charter to recognize it.

The Police Accountability Board, a civilian oversight group that Rochester voters overwhelmingly approved in 2019, filed to unionize last October. It was the first police oversight board in the country to take the step. The board is seeking recognition with Workers United, a national union whose upstate branches have gained attention for successful Starbucks organizing drives.

For over a year since, Rochester Mayor Malik Evans has resisted calls to recognize the union.

Frank Antinetto's battle with the New York Department of Labor started with the sudden appearance of a bruise on his 14-year-old daughter’s arm. After her hospital admission on May 22, she was diagnosed with leukemia in Rochester and sent a thousand miles away, to a children’s cancer center in Memphis. Antinetto, a janitor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, texted his boss that he would miss work while his daughter Jazzy went through chemotherapy.

Within a month of Jazzy’s diagnosis, Antinetto was fired, supposedly for failing to let his employer know his whereabouts. He filed for unemployment insurance, which would have paid him $440 per week. After more than six months of pursuit, he hadn't received a cent. In spite of New York’s progressive reputation, Antinetto’s situation is common.

In 2020, after Rochester police killed Daniel Prude by pinning him to the ground for several minutes with a knee on his back, an autopsy named excited delirium as a contributing factor in his death. Attorney General Letitia James unsuccessfully sought to indict the officers who killed Prude — and issued a report arguing that first responders “must be trained to recognize the symptoms of excited delirium syndrome and to respond to it as a serious medical emergency.”