Wisconsin Police: Volunteering for Defeat
There has been much discussion of winners, losers, and the effect on public employee unions elsewhere in the U.S. after the failure to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. But there has been little comment on one group of unionized workers that were unaffected by public employee union reform, yet joined the losing side anyway. And not once, but on three different occasions.
When Gov. Walker first introduced his plan to eliminate public employee collective bargaining and automatic union dues deduction and to require annual union recertification votes, there were two notable exceptions: police and fire unions.
This exemption was a godsend and it would have been perfectly natural, and tactically sound, if Wisconsin police labor leaders had simply breathed a sigh of relief as the Angel of Death passed over their house on its way to visit AFSCME households.
Instead, many police leaders shinnied up the downspouts so they could get on the roof and try to flag him down.
One expects this type of behavior from firefighters. They’ve always been more committed to labor “solidarity” and most probably know the words to “Joe Hill.” Firemen are accustomed to volunteering in political campaigns and charitable efforts. (Cops say it’s because firemen only work part–time.)
So when Wisconsin firemen began beating on drums in the state capital and protesting the reform legislation, it was not surprising. (One unexpected side effect of the Migration to Madison was the absence of fire trucks blocking the curb at grocery stores and the welcome shortage of firemen brandishing boots in left turn lanes.)
Cops, on the other hand, don’t volunteer.
Part of the difference is attributed to how police and fire unions are organized. Firefighters are much more hierarchical, with the locals sending dues money up to the state and national organization, where spending decisions are made. Consequently, fire locals usually have a shortage of money, but plenty of manpower.
Police unions are feudal. Many locals are independent baronies and keep all the dues money within city limits. Even those locals affiliated with the Fraternal Order of Police or other national organizations still keep local dues money at home and remain politically independent. That’s why effective police unions (those with over 450 dues–paying members) usually have money for political action, and the disinclination to volunteer is not so damaging.
I’ve worked with police (and some fire) unions for over 20 years, and aside from union officers, you get almost no rank–and–file participation. Clients have had to hire temporary workers to gather signatures for police pay raise elections because the officers wouldn’t volunteer.
Police members who threw in with the thug unions in Wisconsin should turn in their badge and gun and learn what it’s like to try to find a job.
Leftist entitlement politics build Stasi.
Listen police and fire fighters are attracted to their jobs because they do not want to be desk jockies. They want the action and they don’t like pushing pencils. So yes there is danger etc however there is also some glamor and also huge political hay made of the fact that they are first responders.. In reality there is very little real protection provided by the police and today fire fighters most likely do not rush recklessly into the jaws of a major fire without attempting more thorough analysis of the risks.. So why the deferential treatment and why the pandering? Also these professions are notorious double dippers as to pensions so why should they not pay a share of their pay like everyone else. The days for free loaders are over. I respect the work of these men and women but they are citizens just like the rests of us.
Tommy Gunn, as a guy well experienced as both a firefighter and police officer, I can tell you that your thoughts about why cops and firemen do what they do is, for the most part, wrong. Politics, praise and glory have nothing to do with why people get into those trades. As for the risk analysis before running into a fire building, I was fireman from 1972-1987, I can tell you the “old school” guys like myself don’t like all that hesitation but are forced to live with it due to regulations by federal agencies. I agree we’re just citizens, but your “double dipping” claim isn’t very accurate, the exception more than the rule. In the agencies I worked for we contributed to our pension funds just like you might do with your 401K. And I am collecting on that investment in my retirement now, got a problem with that?
Given your comment about my not knowing why someone joins these professions, perhaps you could help us understand the reason you chose to be a police officer and a fireman?
Also I do not begrudge anyone a pension either. However how does an average San Jose police officer qualify for $100K per year plus full medical?
The above is not every police officer or fireman however the public sector unions have been raiding the piggy bank for years and the average guy/tax payer on the street without a pension cannot afford it anymore fireman or no fireman and police officer or not. We are in hard times and these benefits are way out of line. Once again it is not your fault since you took what was offered–fair enough. It needs to change though.
Because the calculations are crooked. Pension benefits should be calculated based on base pay, not total pay, so they can’t be inflated by cashing in leave and working a lot of overtime in the last year.
Agree completely. There was a notable increase in retirements among New York police and firemen in the year following 9/11 because their retirements were tied to that final year’s income – which for many included substantial overtime. My own retirement from the Feds was based on top three years pay, which includes no overtime.
Oklahoma is a right to work state; I assure you that the world of cops, COs, and firemen looks a lot different in a union state with full collective bargaining rights for public employees and interest arbitration for public safety employees. Interest arbitration along with the changes in overtime entitlements brought about by Garcia v. San Antonio and its progeny have made $100K/yr. pretty much the standard wage for public safety employees in the union states. It galls a lot of people to pay that to some guy who spends most of his time sitting in the firehouse reading Playboy or watching TV and when there is a fire arrives just in time to have the Fire Marshall pronounce the structure a total loss because there are so few firemen due to the exhorbitant wages and OT costs even on 7K plans. It galls to have the supervisors game the OT assignments both to make sure the “boys” all get a share of the OT and also to make sure there are enough officers called out for OT to make sure that a supervisor is also necessary so the supervisors get a cut of the OT or to game the scheduling so that anytime a cop has to appear in court, s/he is on a premium pay callback at the overtime rate. It isn’t too far out of line to say that you pay a union cop $50-$60K just to be alive and another $50-$60K if you ask him/her to actually do anything.
And I don’t have a problem with you or anyone else collecting a retirement you paid for, I’m collecting one I paid for too, but in the union states, few pay anything and fewer still pay anything like enough into their defined benefit retirement plans. I paid 7% and change for my whole career, all I was asked to pay, but I’ll admit that poltical management gamed the retirement system and often didn’t require enough employee contribution nor make nearly high enough employer contributions, while making people eligible for retirement who never should have been and who paid in next to nothing – and in my state, we don’t even have unions to blame, directly anyway, because retirement isn’t a bargainable subject.
Out here in the private sector, most don’t get pensions. Those are, for the most part, a thing of the past. Instead we get a 401k with a matching contribution. Most companies that offer it will match around the first 5% of your contributions. So, we (most Americans) put in around 95% for our retirement. That is why most people are not sympathetic to union members who complain about having to put in more of their own money towards their retirement. They put in practically nothing in the first place.
Oh, and you’re right; it isn’t a double dip, it’s a triple dip for a lot of them: join the military at 18 and do 20, become a cop, CO, or fireman somewhere between 38 and 40 and do 20 or 25 as may be the case or retire on age at 55 for the plans that allow it, somewhere between fifty five and sixty or sixty-five you’re set with two full retirements, full medical from two plans, plus Social Security and Medicare eligibility. What a Country!
What a Country!
Risk your life on a daily basis, spend a large chunk of your youthful life in foreign hell-holes with no sleep and rotten food, rush into burning buildings, be exposed to every disease and hazardous material known to man for only FIFTY years and get some benefits that the guy who staples paper every day for 20 years doesn’t get.
Amazing!
Orion
You can spout that BS to people who don’t know any better; I’m not one of them. Most in the military are far more likely to fire a stapler than a weapon, likewise most cops and COs go a whole career without hearing a shot fired in anger, and in reality, the COs have a tougher beat and more likelihood of a physical altercation than the cops.
I’m sick of hearing how dangerous your job is, or how much you “sacrifice”. You took the job. It was your choice. I paid your salary the whole time.
Now you want extra benefits? You want to put nothing away and have me continue to pay your bills till you die?
I’m getting real tired of seeing this attitude from veterans, too. Service – an act of helpful activity; help; aid: to do someone a service.
Maybe your definition of service is closer to – what I do to get a little extra something-something.
I’ve been a Cub Scout leader for 5 years. I don’t get paid. I paid to become a leader. I bought my own uniform. I pay for my own gas, training, supplies, etc – and I often end up paying for a lot of the kids. My wife and I constantly buy something with the understanding that we probably won’t get reimbursed for our purchases. That’s fine with us. We’re serving our community by making sure some percentage of the men aren’t useless.
When I’m not paying to make a few of the communitiy’s kids better people, I’m working my regular job to support a family of 5 and try to sock a tiny bit away for retirement.
Tell me again how tough your life is. Tell me again how much I continue to OWE YOU long after you’ve stopped “serving”. I AM SICK OF YOUR ATTITUDE.
Cops, firemen and soldiers receive applause constantly from me and my family. It’s about to end. I’m on the verge of refusing to applaud your sacrifice and bravery. If you need your ass kissed on top of everything else you receive, you have become part of the entitlement culture.
I’m not mad at the world or society for the fact that I don’t have a guaranteed secure retirement, or that I’ll probably end up working till I die. I’m furious with the attitude I read from so-called heros on these comments.
Jaycen, I paid for my salary as well there my friend. Did 8 years in the Marines and paid 8 years in federal and state taxes. Mind you, 15 months of that was Federal Tax free due to being in Iraq, where I “stapled paper” but was a target of indirect-fire (rockets, mortars, bombs, you know those things that make loud explosions) anywhere from 120-200 times a day for 210 days and then again 60-100 times a day for the remaining 240 days. So yeah, my life wasn’t ever in risk, or at harm. I didn’t sit in a crater created by a previous motor attack for 3 mins hoping that they were using another attack grid this time around.
This also doesn’t include the time I spent training for this, partisipating in live fire exercises, or anything else I did. I was only a “paper pusher” but I was still tasked with being a riflemen so I had to know the job of one.
Your welcome by the way, for allowing you to come onto forums like this and have civil discussions about whether or not I “earned the right” to my benefits. Oh, and by the way, less than 30% of a actively serving services members actually retire. Most of them do between 4 and 12 years. They don’t get a retirement check or full medical coverage. Do your research and educate yourself. You as well Art Chance. For someone who “knows better”, you sure don’t know a lot about how the military works.
Don’t flatter yourself; I seriously doubt there is anything you could educate me about.
Nice Art, cockey much? Here’s a free leason for you, strive to learn something every day. Learn that you know very little about the world around you and that others can always present new ideas and perspectives to problems that you cannot always see. Ignorant men believe there is very little they can learn from others. Wise men know that they can always learn something new from others.
I have no problem if “Your” pension fund is paying your pension. I have a problem if it pays before normal retirement, ala “50″ years old and runs dry. You did your service, work another job until you are 62. If “not” and your pension fund runs dry, tuff stuff. If I work for a Corp. and they go broke because they have paid out too much, I would bet you would say to hell with me. I say the same to you. Work to at least Social Security age before you collect.
“It makes sense for them to be able to retire after 25 years on the job, have access to comprehensive medical coverage before and after retirement, and receive a hazardous duty pay differential, just like the military. What’s more, police unions, in stark contrast with other public employee unions, have fought to maintain strict hiring standards, extensive background checks, and stringent physical qualifications.”
The difference between police and firemen and the military is that the military is NOT unionized (thank God). To listen to the above arguments, the police and the firemen should be treated just like the military. Well, OK, then if you want to do that, then there should be NO unions for the police or firemen, just like the military.
The benefits for the military are there as a way of enticing people to join the military and as a reward for their services rendered. And, as with the police or firemen, the majority of the people in the military are NOT in combat or perform combat duties. The same applies for the police and the firemen. Most police and firemen are never really at risk and perform mundane patrol duties or, as with the police in most major cities, have desk jobs.
So I’ve always believed that the police and firemen should be run like the military with NO unions. It has always struck me as strange that police and firemen are unionized. To me that is fundamentally wrong and would be like unioizing the Army. Could you imagine having to negotiate with an Army union on a pay scale, hazerdous pay, work environment, overtime, sick pay, vacation pay, insurance benefits, sick leave, housing benefits, and family health insurance?
Police and firemen should be given the best pay scale, medical and retirement package that a community can afford, NOT the best pay package that the union demands, and that’s the difference. Communities around the nation understand that to have good cops and firemen you have to pay them a good wage to attract the best people for those jobs and to retain their services, just like a volunteer military. But to hold a gun to the heads of towns and cities and demand pay and benefits for union members is just not right. And, with the exploding costs of union benefits for police and firemen all over this country, I don’t think that many communities will be able to afford them much longer. Police and firemen must come to the conclusion that they are part of the community too and that their goal in life should not be to bankrupt it. If the police and firemen are determined to have a union, then they should be treated like any other union and they should understand that simply being a policeman or a fireman doesn’t give you the right bankrupt this nation.
The worst thing about police, CO, and fire bargaining is that in most states where they can bargain, they cannot strike and have resort to interest arbitration for contract formation disputes. Few bargaining laws have explicit standards for an arbitrator’s determination of the competing interests and the de facto standard, even where there is an explicit standard, is comparability to other similar jurisdictions. So, even if you have a responsible state or local government trying to keep its fiscal house in order, the standards for police, CO, and fire wages and benefits is the standard set by your most profligate neighbors.
When I was head of labor relations, all our correctional officers’ union had to do was whisper the words California Correctional Peace Officers’ Association and I’d whisper back, “what would it cost to stop you from saying that?” While we had one or both elected branches of state government in Republican hands during most of my career, all of our larger cities were controlled by Democrats. I spent the last five years or so of my career telling State Troopers that if they wanted what the city cops had, they needed to leave the Troopers and go work for one of the cities. During my tenure we managed to keep the LEO units to the same pattern as other state government units, but since I retired they have prevailed on the Palin/Parnell administrations to give them a lot of the same goodies the Democrats have given the city cop unions.
An employer can prevail in interest arbitration but it takes a lot of resources, work, and the ability and willingness to take an arbitrator’s award to court or to have the legislative body refuse to fund it. None of those things happen under Democrat governance because the Democrats and the unions are co-conspirators in using interest arbitration to give the union what it wants and then blame it on the arbitrator who by the time the decision is rendered is in another state or sitting on a beach earning 20%. Unfortunately, so long as the comparabilty standard is the rule, even responsible governments usually have to live with the same wages and benefits as their more profligate neighbors.
I was an airline pilot for over 30 years and fortunately my pension was not company based. It was a 401K type program that saved me from the three bankruptcies that I experienced. But the big difference between public sector unions and private sector unions is that when our company was threatened with financial ruin the unions were the first to step forward to take a hit to help the company. Since the public sector crowd has no such concern they NEVER offer to help the taxpayers. When our private sector unions took cuts and work rule changes they were not “Snap back” in one or two years like the public sector unions get. Our new position or contract was our the base for any new negotiations. The most absurd item of this entire debate is the fact that public employees of any stripe can have unions. Who as an elected official will ever shut down the safety network to cut costs? No one! How can we as taxpayers ever trust someone who is in office for a short period of time to negotiate looking into the future like a person who owns his/her own business? A politician is only concerned with his/her immediate future and couldn’t care less about twenty years down the road. The only way to compensate public service is to have a board of appointed professional financial administrators who determine what the pay and benefits should be. NEVER an elected politician!
“Since the public sector crowd has no such concern they NEVER offer to help the taxpayers.”
The reality is that they are almost never asked to “help the taxpayers.” At any given time only two or three of the unionized states have either elected branch of government in Republican hands. The Democrats and public sector unions are co-conspirators against the taxpayers. More often than not, Republicans don’t seek concessions, or won’t stick to their guns in seeking them, because they can’t stand the controversy that concessionary bargaining brings about.
As I said in the other post, I was never afraid of any union in its collective bargaining role and I was contemptuous of some of them, but I was definitely afraid of them in their political role. Your faith in an expert board is simply naive; such a board would be elected or appointed by somebody, and they would reflect what that somebody wanted. If they were appointed by a Democrat, they’d give the unions what they wanted with the added imprimatur of it having been given by an “expert” board; sorta like Comrade Obama’s NLRB is an expert board. The system of competing interests contemplated by collective bargaining actually works where there actually are competing interests; the problem in public sector bargain is that there rarely are competing interests at the table and even when they are, the management is afraid of the political clout of the unions. Actually, the only governor I ever worked for who wasn’t either in thrall to the unions or afraid of them was a Democrat who’d found himself with massive budget deficits as defined by current budgets versus expected revenue, so he had to have budget cuts and union concessions. That was my first gig on the employer side and nobody representing the government even knew how to seek concessions from a union; we learned and learned quickly. Never got much in the way of real dollar concessions but got back a lot of management prerogatives and held the line on wages and benefits for a decade.
This is the problem with public service unions and politicans. Especially with elected politicians who often have “short term viewpoints”. One possible solution given today’s technology might be to involve the taxpayers much more in these sort of negotiations. It is also noteworthy that FDR, while favorable to private worker’s unions, definitely did not want “government workers” unionized. I suspect he could forsee the problems with government workers and unions. The politicians have little if any incentive to say “no”. They are not spending their money, they are spending the public’s money. So the public should have a greater “say” in these sort of things…
My son is a fireman and he went to a job opening meeting for the Long Beach, CA city fire department a few years ago. There were 5,000 people in line for about 50 jobs. The two women behind him in line had received calls from the city making sure they could find the location and had been notified. His day was wasted as the whole thing had to be done over. A guy he knew had attended a session of the Black Firefighters’ Association which was to coach
“minority” applicants. He was challenged and expelled from the session because he was Hispanic and he ratted on them. They had the real test to coach applicants, not a simulated or old test.
They repeated the test another day and my son couldn’t get off that day. He was in the top 5% on the first test but it didn’t count.
The Congress got one thing right in the National Labor Relations Act (as amended) when it prohibited “guards” unions from representing other classifications of employees and from being affiliated with unions that represented other classifications of employees. Few if any public sector bargaining laws make a similar distinction for law enforcement employees. If cops, COs, and firemen join AFL-CIO affiliated unions the siren song of power and perks in the AFL-CIO seems irresistable to many union leaders.
The head of a local, unaffiliated LEO or fire union is just a guy, an officer of the Central Labor Council or a Vice-President of the state AFL-CIO is a powerful and influential figure in politics and in the economy as well in those states that allow union trusts for retirement and benefits. Under my state’s bargaining law public safety and fire employees are prohibited from striking and have resort to interest arbitration to settle contract formation disputes. However, due to the politics of the original organization of bargaining units many law enforcement and other employees without a right to strike were placed in bargaining units with employees that could strike. Since, the factual predicate of a strike or interest arbitration was a valid state of impasse, union leaders would almost never take the risk of an impasse to get the LEO employees to interest arbitration for fear of the employer’s lockout or imposition of terms on the rest of the bargaining unit. So long as those employees remained in such units, such as our wall to wall AFSCME unit, their interests were sacraficed to the interests of the clerks and other employees in the units and the leaders of the law enforcement and CO employees were kept placated by elaborate perks in the national organization and in the AFL-CIO. Ultimately both the commissioned law enforcement officers and the correctional officers established separate bargaining units and decertified the wall to wall unions. After nearly thirty years of independence, the siren song of political power and AFL-CIO perks proved too much for the LEO unit and they formed a separate AFSCME local and hired the former head of the state Democrat Party as their business manager who now works closely with the head of the wall to wall AFSCME local, himself a former Democrat state senator. Those backgrounds and allegiances tell you about all you need to know about the real interests of those unions.
I must say that I had to learn most of my craft all over again after AFSCME decertified the independent association that had represented our largest bargaining unit. What you knew of collective bargaining law and practice became relatively unimportant; Hardin and Elkouri were largely replaced by Alinsky. AFSCME reps were terrible at collective bargaining practice and we beat them like a rented mule in arbitration, before the labor board, and in bargaining strategy and tactics, but they were very, very good at politics and managed to buy themselves a governor for two terms. Fortunately for our state they were never able to buy the Legislature as well so we resisted joining the true Blue states in the rush to bankruptcy. They and their AFL-CIO comrades have, however, managed to place enough Democrat made-men in the State Senate to thwart any attempts to restore sanity to the Palin/Democrat oil tax regime that has chased the oil industry out of Alaska and into the more welcoming arms of North Dakota and with the Palin/RonPaul inspired crackup of the Republican Party are well position for pushing Alaska firmly into the ranks of Purple if not outright Blue states.
I’m not one of those Republicans that is viscerally opposed to collective bargaining by public employees, at least by some public employees, if for no other reason because public employers are generally lousy employers with largely incompetent supervision that gives arbitrary and capricious all new meaning. That said, giving public employees vast bargaining rights along with unlimited poltical rights has proven a prescription for fiscal disaster, and of the two, the unlimited political rights for public employees is far more dangerous than bargaining rights. In twenty-odd years of representing the employer in public sector collective bargaining, I never really feared a union at the bargaining table or before an arbitrator, judge, or ALJ, but I was sure as Hell scared of them in politics and for most of my career went through every election with a price on my head. A price on your head is expected when you’re a political appointees; it is illegal when you’re a merit system technocrat, but laws don’t apply to Democrats and their union friends.
I am not sure what you mean by the no strike clause on affected unions means. Have you never been in a city where the NO STRIKE union is doing ZERO work? Like policemen who refuse to do their daily jobs except for murders or armed robberies? Or firemen who seem to take forever to get their gear on and their trucks rolling? City workers in administration positions who take forever to do their work or answer the phones? It’s called a slow down. There has to be a better way than to ever let elected officials negotiate with a public union because the motivation and concern for taxpayer’s money is never their first concern. It used to be that people took public sector jobs for security at the expense of pay and benefits. Not anymore.
I’m not talking about the no-strike clause of a labor agreement with a union that has a legal right to strike. Under such an agreement, a strike or other work stoppage is a violation of the agreement which can be remedied in arbitration or by the courts. I’m talking about unionized public employees who do not have a legal right to strike even on the expiration or in the absence of a contract, e.g., police, fire, jails and prisons, hospitals etc. A strike by such people can be a crime and can result in dismissal of the striking employee(s) as well as charges against the union and suits for damages.
What you describe are not strikes, they’re just poor discipline and feckless management. In a given year all but two or three of the unionized states are deeply and almost irredeemably Blue. Supervisors to the extent that there are actually qualified supervisors in a Democrat government learn that if they try to discipline or meaningfully evaluate an employee that the union backs or who is a member of any Democrat constituency, it is they who will be doing the carpet dance in the boss’s office, not the offending employee. Even those who care about their job, and after a few years there aren’t many, stop trying to get employees to work. In Purple states, supervisors learn that one day they will have Democrat boss and when that new boss takes office, s/he will have a hit list provided by the unions of all supervisors who have offended unionized employees. They will also have a hit list of all HR and LR people who have offended the union and the Democrats will fire or run off all of those people even though most of them are non-political, merit system employees. Even though I was a political appointee for only the last four years of my career, I spent every election for twenty years with a price on my head if the Democrat won. When the Ds took over in ’94, the new commissioner walked into our office and announced that he had campaigned with the unions for the job and one of the campaign promises he’d made was that he would fire us all and replace us with people more acceptable to the unions – even though none of us were political appointees. He wasn’t good enough at the craft to fire us but you can only do things you hate for people you hate for so long and all the old hands got their affairs in order and found places to sit out the Democrat tyranny. I was on our Mayor’s transition team as he took over after six years of Democrat misrule; I took one look around and said, “I’ve seen this movie.” They’d run off all the old hands with authority over money, people, and property and replaced them with kids and Democrat hacks, thus making it safe to steal what they wanted, hire who they wanted, and give contracts to their pals; it’s the Democrat way and they get away with it at every level of government because the leftie idiot that pass for reporters never look under a Democrat’s skirts. Democrats are good people, good people don’t do bad things, therefore Democrats never do bad things.
My first job out of law school was to defend the police and firefighters. I love these guys.
These are guys who will throw themselves into the danger, they race toward the peril when the crowd is barreling toward them in the other direction.
They run INTO the fire, (flame and bullet).
Unions are now an abomination and public unions are a hyper-abomination. But, cops and firefighters are heroes….almost all of them, almost all the time there is a danger. (there are exceptions, but they do not move the needle on the above statement)
We, as a nation and a society should protect and reward them for their service. It is the union model (now, almost completely in the hands of the Workers Party small c communists, also known as the Democratic Party in some circles) that is broken and ugly and traitorous. To have THAT associated with cops and firefighters causes cognitive dissonance with those of us in the resistance. We are natural allies of cops and firefighters. We should remain their stoutest protectors and defenders.
They are now prisoners in a “prison system”, the wardens are crooked and treasonous. The Workers Party prison system is what we should resist and never, ever, confuse the heroes confined within it with that system.
(On a side note…I received an email from an acquaintance yesterday that contained a picture of Obama at a Workers Party speech in Wisconsin, where he made a comment about the “union” being around since the 1800′s as signified by the “union flag” he was standing beneath that contained an 1800′s date stitched into it. One of the workers then had to tell Obama it was the Wisconsin state flag and the date was when Wisconsin became a state. The Propaganda and Lies Ministry then had to …yet again…bury the story…for the “smartest man in the room”….and apparently they went about the business of fixing his now very unreliable teleprompter.
Don’t know if the story is true, or if it actually happened…since, Obama malaprops and dunderheaded utterings don’t seem so easily amuse the propagandists like they used to when it wasn’t a comrade dropping them with this sort of hysterical regularity.)
I can tell you it’s true because the following day every Republican in the state was laughing their heads off. The conservative talk show hosts had a field day!
I’ve worked around police officers for nearly all of my professional life and I live in a hard-butt union state. Nearly every police force in Ohio is unionized and they wield vast political clout at the local and state level. Police officers are generally quite lovely people as individuals. However once they are “organized” they quite frankly take on the collective characteristics of a plague of locusts. Since the police account for anywhere from forty to sixty percent of your average metropolitan budget any increases in their pay and benefit structure has immense impact on everything in local government.
States that allow police to unionize enable police to benefit in two distinct ways. First is the money and organizational clout that cops can mobilize on behalf of “their” candidates. Take a city like Dayton with about 500 police officers. That’s five hundred motivated unions members (and their families) providing cash and volunteers to assist in the election of a majority of city council seats or the mayors office. These efforts are repaid in full during contract talks with lavish compensation packages.
Second there is the (largely baseless) “myth of the police officer.” The “police myth” is invaluable to a political candidate. Most politicians would rather run over their own parents with a lawn mower than lose the endorsement of the public safety unions. What candidate would willingly reject the endorsement of the cops and all of those photo-ops and billboards depicting him or her surrounded by “our men and women in blue?”
The public is simply bamboozled by the police as to the nature of the job. The police unions promote this “bamboozle” and profit from it. The following should always be strongly emphasised when dealing with cops.
1. The “Danger” Theme – The most prevalent company meme given by polic eunions is “We put our lives on the line every day for the public.” This can be answered in two ways – First and foremost is “Well, that’s your job.” I always tell police officers that nobody put a gun to their head and marched them to the recruiting station and forced them to become cops. They become cops for the paypowers, pension and privileges that the job carries. And we (the public) provide them with the best training we can (and the best equipment) to enable them to do it. We should be glad that those who become cops choose to do so but we should not have to go around 24/7 being eternally grateful.
2. How dangerous REALLY is it to be a cop? According to insurance statistics being a police officers is tenth or eleventh on the list of “the most dangerous jobs in the U.S.” (The first is commercial roofer.) The cruel fact is that most of the average patrol officer’s day is spent in his car doing nothing but “being alert.” Police work is long, long stretches of “simply being there” interposed with sudden bursts of (sometimes dangerous) activity. It is a myth to believe that police officers clock on to work and are then thrown into the cauldron of a battle zone for the next eight hours. Also, the “dangerousness” argument doesn’t apply to the internal staff and command officers who make up such a large percentage of the personnel of any police department. These individual NEVER face danger yet receive the same advantages of the police myth (and the same pay and opportunties for overtime) as do their brothers and sisters “on the street.”
Police unions interweave the “gratitude” we should feel for them along with the political skills of a John L. Lewis. It’s a unique combination denied to union members in the private sector and others in the public sector. (Try imagining a hard-hitting documentary-style reality-TV program called “City Auditor’s Office – The View From the Inside.”) Police are also humans – They will try to get as much as they can whenever they can get it. Politicians stand up to them at their peril since nobody wants to be tarred with the brush of being “soft on crime.”
These, among other reasons, are why police unions are not just an inconvenience, they are a danger. Many wil counter with the argument that police (and fire) unions are forbidden by state law to go on strike. This is true. However when a city (or county) and it’s police unions cannot agree on a contract the issue usually goes to a state arbitration board that, more likely than not, comes down on the side of the police. And of course the mayor or city council that forces the issue to that level will have to pay the price in police wrath at the next election.
“Police unions are feuda…” That is a wonderful and descriptive line. They are indeed little baronies committed to preserving and extending their “clout” as far as possible. And as in all feudal organizations it’s usually the most grasping and unscrupulous members who rise to the top.
JFK signed Executive Order 10988 permitting public sector unions as a sop to rich union-loving communists. A Republican President could countermand JFK’s Executive Order on day one. But that would go against Progressive Republican interests, wouldn’t it?
It’s all so simple when you don’t know anything about it. Kennedy and Nixon’s EO only conferred bargaining rights on a limited universe of employees of the federal government and the federal bargaining duty is VERY limited in comparison to either the private sector or most state law bargaining.
State and local government employee bargaining is a creature of state and local laws and ordinances and each one is different though they share some commonalities and are based on the federal Labor Management Relations Act (the National Labor Relations Act as amended). Ironically, WI was the first to confer bargaining rights on its employees back in 1959, well before Kennedy’s EO. So, whatever might be thought of it now, the majority of the Legislature in half the states at one time thought that public employee bargaining was a good thing. I don’t, however, think that any of those legislatures were controlled by Republioans at the time of passage.
You are correct that JFK’s EO only covered FEDERAL public sector unions.
Let me add one CAPITALIZED word to my previous comment:
JFK signed Executive Order 10988 permitting FEDERAL public sector unions as a sop to rich union-loving communists. A Republican President could countermand JFK’s Executive Order on day one. But that would go against Progressive Republican interests, wouldn’t it?
Better?
“Better?” No, not really. Federal employee bargaining is relatively inconsequential compared to bargaining by state and local public employees. I don’t know if Comrade Obama appreciated the irony of his carrying on about the awful events in WI when even after the changes in WI’s bargaining law, WI employees had far greater bargaining rights than federal employees. Few if any federal employees can bargain wages, almost all state and local employees can, no federal employees have interest arbitration, almost all public safety employees in the unionized states do, most federal employees are in open shops, few state and local employees in the union states are. I can go on.
The reality is that were a Republican President to rescind the EOs, the employees would remain under contract until the expiration of the contracts and the one mission of the whole of organized labor would be the defeat of that President, anyone who supported him, and protecting his/her turf and electoral chances would become the one and only thing that the President could do. If a Republican President were to choose to do it, s/he would have to run and be on a platform of doing so and do it as soon as his hand comes off The Bible so the legal fights are over before the next election, preferably before the next general election to lesson the impact on Congressional elections. Republican energy and money is much better spent in limiting collective bargaining and restricting political activity by unions in the states. If a Republican really wanted to do something useful regarding federal employees, s/he would work with the Congress to restore the old Hatch Act restrictions on political activity by federal employees.
I thought the Hatch Act was still the law of the land…silly me.
To summarize our different positions:
You believe we should bargain with the devil because it is powerful and it might beat us. I believe we should try to destroy the devil even if we might lose the battle.
You are realistic and I am a purist. You win, right?
@ C P: No, the Hatch Act has been steadily eroded and was all but gutted in the guise of Clinton/Gore’s government “reforms.” If you live in a Western state with a lot of federal land and employees, federal employees are essentially an occupying army. I’d really like to see them all, including active duty military, have to remain registered at the point of hire/enlistment and vote absentee. If you can transfer or are subject to transfer involuntarily, e.g., military and federal LEOs, you really can’t establish residency with the intent to remain, the factual predicate of most residency laws.
No, I believe in doing things that offer a significant gain and a reasonable probability of success. I’m not into forlorn hopes in the name of principle or phyrric victories that leave your enemy stronger than you. Do what I proposed and in the states we Republicans control stop feeding all the Democrat front groups and other hands that bite us and the rest will take care of itself. The left understands incrementalism, the right has the attention span of a gnat and wants the world and wants it now.
When laws like the Hatch Act, and many others, are routinely ignored by the US government, you know that our country is in serious decline. Some of us realize this and want to do an intervention to fix it. Interventions are not comfortable and are very unpleasant.
It’s true that Executive Order 10988 only conferred collective bargaining rights on federal employees but two other things were at work. First, the nation was experiencing one of the great economic booms of all time and public sector wages/benefits were considerably below those in the private sector. Conferring the right to organize on state/local employees made sense as a means of keeping good workers and not losing them to the private sector. This was particularly true for the police.
Second – Kenney was murdered. His death cast a “glow” around everything he had done as president. It was pretty tough for state and local officials in Democratic-leaning states to refuse something that “Our martyred President would have wanted.”
However that was nearly half-a-century ago and the rationale for police unionization no longer exists.
Yep!
I find two problems with the article.
One, the attitude you advocate for cops — “the law doesn’t touch me so I don’t care” — is flawed. If cops think that teachers and nurses are getting shafted, they should speak up.
Two, I think Walker’s exemption of cops and firefighters from Act 10 was smart politically and nothing more. It’s no more proper for cops and firefighters to engage in a conflict of interest where taxpayer funds are at stake than it is for teachers and nurses to do so, but everyone knows that getting them to participate in the same reforms as teachers and nurses would be suicidal. Maybe Wisconsin can move on to cops and firefighters twenty or thirty years from now.
You’re naive if you think that the unions stick together. They won’t even go to bat for those in their own unions……. it’s a dog eat dog world in there.
The Milwaukee school district and I believe, the Racine school districts rushed to sign contracts with the teachers’ union before Act 10 kicked in. Of course, they didn’t haves the “tools” that the governor had put in the law for school districts to use to keep the schools going. They were forced to either ask the teachers to take a voluntary pay cut or lay off a couple of hundred teachers. When asked if they’d take the pay cut the teachers responded with a resounding, “NO!”
That big blue fist gave such a punch in the solar plexus to the younger teachers!!
This is what “Solidarity” looks like!
P.S. For what it’s worth the public sector unions are still able to bargain for wages but that is all. If I told you all the things they had collectively bargained for in the past, you’d call me a liar!
One thing I’d like to point out:
90% of the firefighters in the United States are VOLUNTEERS. We have no union, nor do we want one.
It’s the 10% who become Career firefighters – and are forced to join a union – that give the rest of us a bad name when they play these sorts of Union games.
Orion
Corruption is inevitable when the police are run by unions. The citizens must fear for their rights,because a union can work as a collective thiniking that they are above the law. All police unions ought to be dissolved because we cannot put our trust in the police when the unions are notorious for acting above the law or in cahoots with organized crime. Police should be hired like most private sectot non union jobs. Liberty is too fragile to submit to any mob. Case in point the mobs infiltration of the nypd back in the day. Of all the levels of govt sub. by the taxpayer the police is one of the most essential and necessary. For that reason alone, the protection of society, society cannot allow corruption via police unionism.
Pastor saying F- YOU while preaching
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqPOKbTSMpk&feature=player_embedded
No, the police are not like the military. We are NOT an occupied country. Yet that is the attitude that police and far too many people who should know better.
Republicans and those on the right need to wake up – the police are not our friends (or anyone’s friends). They are a tool of government repression and will happily work against us. Like the rest of the domestic government, police should be very much limited in power.
We need to rein in their power, as well as that of prison workers unions. We don’t need to imprison so many people (more than any country in the world) – our society won’t collapse. Indeed, the opposite, if we keep spending more and more on cops and prisons and locking people up we are going to go broke (well, one of the reasons, too much spending in general).
When we fear the police and are innocent, we live in a police state!
pensions based on last years of work salary, which is allowed to be inflated by sick days, vacation days and overtime is gaming the system.
Base the pension on salary, not on salary plus perks.
And that starts to solve a huge part of the problem
And then like in private sectors go to a use it or lose it for vacation and sick pay.
Who has use it or lose it for sick leave? The point of banking sick leave should be to serve as short-term disability insurance in the event of a major illness or injury. Placing an expiration date on it just encourages absenteeism.
Damn, damn and double damn ALL public employee unions. The very concept should be illegal. Public employee unions are just plain wrong. Those supporting them are in violation of their basic oath to serve and protect. Reagan knew how to deal with public endangering union members. Fire them all.
I have know problem with Police officers retiring after 25-30 years of service. I do how ever have a problem with them collecting a pension at 50-62 years old. We all have to wait to reach Social Security age to collect. They should also have to wait until that age to collect a pension, and it should not be at the level they were paid. “Some”, not all Police have a dangerous life, compared to our Active Infantry Troops, most are on a pic-nic. From 50-62 go work at Wal-Mart or what ever, working people can quit early, they will not get paid for doing nothing, neither should Police.
I was a patrolman in Chicago in the 60s. 30% of the force should receive combat pay and the rest sit on their collective asses. Similar to the current Army where less than 15% see the front lines and the entire force is called heroes because of the 15% doing the dirty work.
The biggest problem with Police and Fire personnel is the DISABILITY RACKET. Over 50% of the Lexington Kentucky Policemen and Firefighters are on disability,(bad backs and hearing problems are the favorites) that is absurd. If you are 5% disabled, you are not allowed to even sit behind a desk. How is that for union work rules?
Most PTSD claims are fake and they are exploding against us. I am retired military and know that there are scumbags everywhere (including the military).
The vast majority of fireman and police around the country have no more chance of being injured or killed than most other professions. Yes, in urban areas the risks increase. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t put them on pedestals and grant them benefits far more than the taxpayer can afford. There are more applicants than positions available so there is no need for that.
Most cops I see around here spend most of their time writing tickets to keep the money coming in. Call them for a problem and they will usually tell you nothing much can be done. I would just as soon defend myself because they aren’t going to be in the right place at the right time anyway. We need to get back to the notion of “peace officers” and away from “law enforcement”. As of now cops are just agents of a meddling government. When they come for our guns it will be the police performing that function. Sadly they are on the wrong side.
I miss watching all the protestors waddle through the streets of Madison, as if there was a free all-you-can-eat buffet inside the courthouse. It’s time to change the socialist’s logo of a blue fist to porky the pig, to match the size of it’s members. At the very least, add a plump, juicy turkey leg to that clenched fist. Yummy food for the socialist herd! Moooooooooo.
Why WeThePeople are sick, tired, and fed up with public sector service employee union thugsters and their thugster bozo bosses:
They are on both sides of the Collective Extortioning table. That’s it in a nutshell. That depiction has been made so many times, it makes one have to choke down that ole upchuck.
You have brought it all on your own heads. It is the money (taxes) of WeThePeople that you earn, collect, bribe, and extort, with no actual party on our side in any negotiations. Thus, EXTORTIONING is the proper word. Bargaining is a laugh, a bad joke, and sickness, and deserves to go into the dustbin of history.
WeThePeople, if you cannot yet see it (see Wisconsin, for example), take the sh#t out of your eyes and ears and LEARN. Learn GOOD!