Current Events > 'It's time to kick police unions out of the labour movement. They aren't allies'

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/13/police-unions-afl-cio-labor-movement

The ultimate power of the labor movement lies in solidarity. Together, working people are strong. So what can the movement do in this moment of national struggle against racism and police violence? The obvious answer is to deny the power of solidarity to police unions, which function as barriers to the very reforms that Americans are now fighting for. The time has come to put police unions on a raft and set them adrift. Perhaps they can reapply for solidarity if they ever stop abusing the rest of us.

Earlier this week, my union, the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), formally called upon the AFL-CIO Americas largest union coalition, representing 55 unions, including us to expel police unions from its ranks. (I am one of the 21 elected WGAE council members who unanimously voted to approve this resolution, but I speak here only for myself.) We do not dispute the right of anyone to have a union, but police unions are incompatible with the AFL-CIOs mission to vanquish oppression. For centuries, the police have in fact been the tool of oppression wielded to crush working people. A common thread that runs from striking union members getting their heads bashed in to the tragedy of George Floyd is the presence of aggressive and unaccountable police.

It is worth noting that the AFL-CIOs own constitution says that affiliated unions can be kicked out if their activities are consistently directed toward the achievement of the program or purposes of authoritarianism, totalitarianism, terrorism and other forces that suppress individual liberties and freedom of association and oppose the basic principles of free and democratic trade unionism. When I read those words, I conjure up the image of the combative riot police who unjustly arrested multiple journalists and WGAE members who were peacefully covering the recent protests against police violence.

Unfortunately, getting police unions out of the broader labor movement will not be easy. The AFL-CIO immediately rejected the WGAEs resolution with little discussion. Why? It is not as simple as the fear of losing members the International Union of Police Associations has 100,000 members, a drop in the bucket of the AFL-CIOs 12.5 million union members. Rather, the union establishment fears for its own existence.

To understand this, you have to keep in mind the fact that business interests have been waging a very successful campaign to destroy all unions for decades now. Union membership among private sector workers has plummeted to less than 7%; among public sector workers, however, more than 33% are in unions. Government workers are by far the strongest sector of organized labor. And big unions are determined not to allow any sort of attack on public sector union membership even if those unions are police unions, who are protecting cops who beat and kill the rest of us.

Lee Saunders is the head of AFSCME, the most powerful public sector union in the AFL-CIO, which represents 1.4 million state and local government workers, including some cops. In an op-ed this week, he wrote: Just as it was wrong when racists went out of their way to exclude black people from unions, it is wrong to deny this freedom to police officers today. Fine. But we dont need them inside of our labor movement, poisoning it for everyone else. (There is a related strain of argument that says that if we push police out of the labor movement, well lose the ability to influence them for the better. This is laughably disconnected from reality. How has that worked out for us so far? Perhaps if we wait another hundred years, well see some progress?)

Union leaders think that the American public is too stupid to understand the difference between regular labor unions and police unions. I disagree. Here is the difference: labor unions empower working people. Police unions disempower working people, by making it impossible to reform and hold accountable police forces that systematically abuse, imprison and terrify working people. Likewise, the motivation of the rightwing assault on unions in general is to disempower working people. The motivation for the current campaign to take police unions out of the labor movement is to empower working people by ensuring that the AFL-CIO is not forced to represent a slice of the workforce that is structurally opposed to its broader mission of freedom and equality for the sort of people most likely to be harassed by the police.

This seems simple enough. It is sad to see the union establishment ruled more by fear of losing what they have than by a vision for a better future. Millions of Americans have taken to the streets to cry out for justice. Not only is it the responsibility of the labor movement to stand next to them it is the responsibility of the labor movement to be them. Union membership has been declining for decades, as inequality rises. This is not a coincidence. A revival of working-class power is vital to fixing many of the underlying issues that have broken our nation. (For example, unions are the only thing that has ever helped close the wage gap between black and white workers.)

The energy that has flowed into the protests must also flow into the labor movement. In order for that to happen, unions and the AFL-CIO need to welcome everyone in. That cant happen when the cops are guarding the door. Time to make a choice. People over police.

---

A profession with so much power should not have a union that gives them even more power.

---

Bullet_Wing posted...

I thought conservatives were anti union? What's their take on this? It's OK for police to be protected by unions, but not factory workers?

Police unions I bet are the only union they think is good

Don't police kinda try to disperse strikes other unions do at the behest of corporations anyways?

About fucking time.

---

I've been saying this for a while now.
Many times on this board over the last few weeks as well.
---

WingsOfGood posted...

Don't police kinda try to disperse strikes other unions do at the behest of corporations anyways?

Yep, police have been used as union busters forever.
---

Police unions are the one union liberals don't support and the one union that conservatives do support.

That should tell you an awful lot

---

Bio1590 posted...

Yep, police have been used as union busters forever.

Yet they are allowed to have a union. Sickening.

Public servants need to answer to the pubic, not some union head.

The unions are responsible for defending and enabling bad cops.

---

TommyG663513 posted...

Police unions are the one union liberals don't support and the one union that conservatives do support.

That should tell you an awful lot

If police are allowed a union so should soldiers.
---

Police unions are also the reason why bad cops are able to get reassigned to new districts when they get in trouble.

---

Chuck police unions into the sun and then chuck that sun into a bigger star. The police are agents of the state with a monopoly on violence, garner the lions share of state and local government's funds, and have extreme political power through their PR and their ability to sabotage society and politicians by not enforcing the law. They aren't a marginalized work force that needs to band together to prevent being screwed by capital. They are a group that tries to make themselves an unaccountable, untouchable, paramilitary organization. They have also historically been literally the main tool of anti-labor oppression.

That's different from other public unions. This shouldn't be taken as a chance to attack those. The police unions are uniquely bad actors with uniquely poor justifications for existing.

---

My dad was a correctional officer and applied his hatred of his union to all unions, and even the concept of a union. I wonder if he'd be willing to play spot-the-difference.

Nah.

---

Lol police unions are exactly as in the pocket of Democrat interest groups as every other union. They can go fuck themselves just like, again, every single other union.

---