These are topical considering recent events. And they bridge one of the topics of this week - interest groups, specifically labor unions.
- How Police Unions Became Such Powerful Opponents to Reform Efforts.
Over the past five years, as demands for reform have mounted in the aftermath of police violence in cities like Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and now Minneapolis, police unions have emerged as one of the most significant roadblocks to change. The greater the political pressure for reform, the more defiant the unions often are in resisting it — with few city officials, including liberal leaders, able to overcome their opposition.
They aggressively protect the rights of members accused of misconduct, often in arbitration hearings that they have battled to keep behind closed doors. And they have also been remarkably effective at fending off broader change, using their political clout and influence to derail efforts to increase accountability.
While rates of union membership have dropped by half nationally since the early 1980s, to 10 percent, higher membership rates among police unions give them resources they can spend on campaigns and litigation to block reform. A single New York City police union has spent more than $1 million on state and local races since 2014.
- Floyd killing shows police unions abuse power. We need radical reform: Former union lawyer.
I have spent my career working in and around the labor movement, first as a lawyer for a community-based workers center, then in the general counsel’s office of a major labor union, and for the past dozen years researching and teaching labor law at Harvard. I am of the firm belief that unions are the single most important and effective voice for working people we have ever known and the best chance we have for building a more equitable economy and politics. In recent years, collective bargaining has enabled teachers to win funding for their classrooms, fast-food workers to increase the minimum wage, and nurses to negotiate staffing ratios that have helped ensure adequate care for COVID-19 patients. Collective bargaining is, in my view, a treasure that deserves fierce protection.
Nonetheless, collective bargaining is, at bottom, just a tool. And like all such tools, it can be abused. When unions use the power of collective bargaining for ends that we, as a democratic society, deem unacceptable it becomes our responsibility — including the responsibility of the labor movement itself — to deny unions the ability to use collective bargaining for these purposes.
- As protests grow, big labor sides with police unions.
Labor unions exist to protect workers, but most workers aren’t authorized to use deadly force as part of their jobs.
Police unions have written labor contracts that bar law enforcement agencies across the country from immediately interrogating or firing officers after egregious acts of misconduct.
Leaders of the country’s other labor unions are tiptoeing around the subject as their members join protests in hundreds of U.S. cities this week over the killing of George Floyd. Labor leaders have strongly denounced police officers’ actions in that case and called on lawmakers to address systemic racism. But they’re suggesting that collective bargaining agreements shouldn’t be on the table. They’ve been careful not to blame police unions for the problem, choosing to embrace them instead.
Police union contracts are not normal collective bargaining agreements. Police unions have crafted a complex web of disciplinary rules that critics say makes it impossible to hold police accountable for killing unarmed Black citizens. After a Minneapolis police officer pinned Floyd’s neck to the ground for more than 8 minutes while fellow officers stood by and watched, many want to see these union contract rules reformed or dismantled.
“The short answer is not to disengage and just condemn,” Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO labor federation, said Wednesday on a press call about racial justice. “The answer is to totally re-engage and educate.”
