As president of the New York City Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, Norman Seabrook helped push several bills through the State Legislature. As an influential voice in the labor movement, Seabrook negotiated prescription drug prices with the Municipal Labor Committee. As a Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) board member, he recently spoke out against a proposed fair hike.

“I don’t see any conflict in what I do,” Seabrook said. “When you’re righteous, you’re righteous.”
Seabrook, a 47-year-old South Bronx native, said he tried to look out for the interest of the city’s low- and middle-income men and women at the MTA and in his union activities. This sometimes put Seabrook at odds with his MTA colleagues, as has opposition to a proposed fare hike.

“I, as a representative of my constituency, am not going to sit there and just arbitrarily agree to an increase because everybody else in the room says so,” he said. “If they thought I was going to rubber stamp something because they said so, they’re seriously mistaken.”

Seabrook said he was the lone dissenter to the fare hike on the board of directors. He felt a fare hike would hurt the average commuter.

“They can come up with a way to keep the cost of increases off the backs of the people who don’t make enough money as it is,” he said.

Seabrook started in the labor movement with a concern for workers who do not receive equal benefits and salaries. After the start of his first term as Correction Officers’ president in 1995, Seabrook set out to raise the public profile of the city’s correction officers, an overlooked group that did not have the same benefits as their fellow law enforcement officers.

“Correction officers patrol the toughest precincts in New York: the city jails, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he said.

Seabrook, who was re-elected twice, has since become an advocate throughout the labor movement. Under former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (R), Seabrook chaired the Uniformed Forces Coalition, an umbrella organization of 12 uniformed officers unions.

His extensive union activities got him attention from unexpected quarters, and in 2002, President George W. Bush (R) appointed him to a presidential commission to improve customer service in the United States Postal Service.

“If people look at my comments at the back of the presidential commission report, I formulated my own opinion,” Seabrook said. “If anyone knows that I am not a yes man, it’s certainly the president of the United States.”

To Seabrook, the same can be said for former Gov. George Pataki (R). Before Pataki appointed Seabrook to the MTA’s board of directors, the governor also selected him to join a bipartisan task force for election reform.

“I bring straightforward convictions of what I believe is important for the jobs that I’ve been appointed to do,” Seabrook said.

These convictions led Seabrook to back candidates who could have hurt his career. He was the only labor leader to endorse Michael Bloomberg (R) for mayor in 2001. Seabrook made the endorsement when Mark Green, the Democratic nominee, was ahead in the polls. In the 2008 presidential race he is again going against the grain, as one of the few prominent labor leaders in New York to endorse Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D) in the presidential race over Sen. Hillary Clinton (D).

Seabrook said his work ethic lets him focus on how fair labor contracts benefit the average person. One of his goals in bargaining for correctional officers was to show the public that these men and women should have equal benefits to protect the average citizen. He believes his obligation is to keep the public’s needs in mind when discussing labor issues.

“We need to be able to have the men and women receive the benefits they so rightfully deserve, the public receive the services they are paying for and management has to be able to understand both sides of that equation,” he said.

Yet Seabrook does not see himself as an arbitrator between labor and management, nor as an ombudsman for the public in labor disputes. He fills a different role, he believes. Without having to worry about wooing voters and not receiving a salary for his government appointments, Seabrook calls himself an altruistic advocate.

“I only see myself,” he said, “as a labor leader that’s trying to do the right thing.”