When have we tried it in the modern US? On a broad basis; not in isolated and temporary reform pushes in individual municipalities. From a policy stand point the big thrust nationally since Richard “Law and Order” Nixon has been toward militarization. That was the whole point of the war on drugs mentality. Fix all that devious crime by treating it as a military opponent, dictated federally nationwide.
As are judges, teachers, DA’s, most elected officials, when you extract it that far. You ignore the fact that there are other individually commissioned officers who have far more power over both us and them. And it’s those folks that determine how that power is used.
So, if I get this right, what you’re saying is, we have to fight and win dozens of pretty much time tested policy battles that are unwinnable over likely the course of a century to possibly get the reform we desperately need yesterday?
Yes. Your badly mischaracterizing it for effect. But changing policy is sort of the base way reform happens. Hell banning police from collective bargaining is a policy change. Just one I think would have broader, and worse, negative effects on working people as a whole then it would positive effects on the criminal justice system.
By all means use the law to prod the unions (not just the police unions, many of them are in need of a new approach) toward reform. Weaken their involvement in criminal investigations of police. Try to win them over to a pro-reform position. You know fix them, instead of eradicating them. But that’s only going to get you so far if you ignore the well established corruption and policy issues that drive the problem. That’s one part of a complex situation. Just like any other issue we need to elect politicians that will enact better policy, appoint better people, push for laws that dictate better policy, etc. And many unions, regardless of field, are badly in need of a similar push internally. Even if you wanted to push things in the opposite direction you’d have to do that. That’s sort of the base way politics and government work. These things have changed over the course of a century. The broad results look depressing similar, but the details are vastly different then they were even a couple decades ago.
Generally speaking I’m not ameniable to arguments that look at a system in need of improvement. Focus narrowly on a very real problem with unions, and offer killing the unions as some sort of cure all. I didn’t buy it when education reform “required” the removal of teachers unions because of the “rubber room” problem and difficulties in removing bad or abusive teachers. And I don’t buy it now.
Who are these old white people who are now scared of cops? I thought the media had done a pretty good job of keeping this exclusively a racial issue in the public mind, specifically so old bigoted white people would support any amount of police brutality to protect them from black “thugs.”
Less than fifteen years ago libertarians would still crow about public workers being subpar because the private sector paid more and got the top talent. It’s a sign of how fucked up the private sector has become that an increasing number of people have become resentful of how “good” government workers got it.
Bur criticizing a union for representing a member who has done something bad, is a bad argument; the union is there to defend the rights of its members, not to judge them - its no more aberrant than a lawyer representing a criminal.
That is to say, the problem is the police, not the police unions. Any problem with the police unions is likely to be because they are made up of police.
I agree that the current police union contracts are a perverse form of employee protection. I also think the reason why more white people are finally waking up to the problem is because they know police officers, with the support of their union, will become an equal opportunity abuser of rights before they ever give up their protection to be above the law. White people will either mobolize to finally assist in changing the current system, or soon face the same treatment a lot of minorities have dealt with for the past several decades of modern policing; which most white people have ignored or rationalized away. That’s my theory on the matter.
Yeah, and rightly so, for precisely the same reason.
They don’t exist to protect anything but their own lock on power. And it doesn’t matter if it’s police, firemen or teachers - their sole unstated purpose is gaming the system and covering their asses from accountability.
It’s just easier to see when cops do it, since they’re “supposed” to be following the law, and can kill you directly.
The problem is that unions, in general, have expanded beyond what they were originally envisioned to do.
They’re not just a lever to make collective bargaining possible; they’re also tasked with investigating wrongdoing by or against their members, providing legal defense, lobbying the government, administering pension funds, and basically anything else that makes sense for the members to band together as a group to do.
And the problem is that most of that stuff is necessary. It’s not necessary that it be part of the union, but it’s necessary that the members have someone to do this stuff for them.
So, unless we can set up some impartial third-party agency(ies) to take care of these duties that are currently handled by the union, allowing them to return to their primary task of providing a collective front for bargaining, then we won’t be able to (and shouldn’t) strip the unions down to a point where they’re not overpowered.
I like the NYT suggestion that we get rid of police unions but since nothing is actually being done and nothing has actually changed, why the speculation as to the root cause of imaginary change?
Unions are good in general, including how they make it more difficult to just arbitrarily fire people, but this is one excess that could certainly stand to be curbed.
Yes, exactly. Either cops should be treated like everyone else when they commit a crime, or even better, everyone else should have the same presumption of innocence police get.
Just like I don’t blame unions for having better wages and benefits, I work towards having competitive compensation myself.
The op-ed here doesn’t suggest disbanding the unions, as well it shouldn’t. I agree with others that that would set a dangerous precedent in a country with far too few unions. This doesn’t change the fact that police unions are a public enemy. They are our enemy in the competition for the ear (pocket?) of our public officials. As the OP points out, government officials are making these deals with the police, and succumbing to the pressure of the unions. The unions are gross, and their attitude and actions are making their constituents enemies of the people, so one would hope better representation can be elected in the future, but that will only happen if their tactics fail to work with government officials. To make this happen, it needs to be clear that the deals that are being made are not acceptable, and that officials who make such deals will be removed.
Now, what this may also require is a limitation of the kinds of political powers that unions can have, and how union money can be spent. I would be all in favor of this across all unions, as long as corporate lobbying is similar brought in line. So yeah, about as likely as removing corrupt officials.
Honestly, countries that have across-the-board unions for all of “labor” as opposed to unions for specific bureaucracies and industries are much more productive and sensible, but I would hope we wouldn’t erode what little labor representation we have.
“Execute” implies the victim was completely helpless. “Murder” can happen while the victim is fighting back. I don’t think journalists use “execute” as a sanitized euphemism; if anything it’s considered worse than “murder,” outside the legal executions in prisons.
Lifelong union member here, and I absolutely agree, and I would extend it to other public sector unions.
In decades of watching numerous negotiations and their aftermaths, something I believe strongly is that negotiations have to be adversarial to get outcomes that are good in the long term. The weight that public sector unions throw around in electing their own bosses is something that I believe threatens this balance.
I mean, in all the negotiations I’ve been involved in, I wish I could have threatened my adversary’s job by painting them in the media as hating cute little children and loving murderers and rapists or some such claptrap.
