Resources
Why Police Unions Are Not The Same As Labor Unions
Police have been on the wrong side of the centuries-old struggle between workers and employers.
Rather than side with members of the working class, police have used their legal authority to protect businesses and private property, enforcing laws viewed by many as anti-union.
Breaking Lines
When workers managed to form unions, companies called on local police to disperse union gatherings, marches and picket lines using violence and mass arrests to break the will of strikers.
- Officers shot at the families of coal miners during the Battle of Blair Mountain
- Officers crushed the ribs of immigrant garment workers during the Uprising of the 20,000
- Officers teargassed working-class protesters in Minneapolis after police killed George Floyd.
Accountability
Collective Bargaining is meant to be used as a tool for workers rights. A tool for reform and accountability.
It is not meant to shield workers from accountability for their actions, especially when they have caused harm to other workers or the public.
As long as police unions continue to wield their collective bargaining power as a [weapon], preventing reforms and accountability, no one is safe.
Writers Guild of America, East
Police Unions + Misconduct
There is a direct correlation between officer misconduct and police unionizing under bad contracts.
Police Unions + Misconduct
- “...collective bargaining rights are being used to protect the ability of officers to discriminate in the disproportionate use of force against the nonwhite population,” Economist Rob Gillezeau recently said on Twitter
- A University of Chicago working paper found violent misconduct among sheriff’s officers increased about 40 percent after a state supreme court ruling allowed the officers to unionize.
- Contracts that include so-called “Law Enforcement Bill of Rights” language (Chapter 143 in Texas) are worse, giving cops extra protections when they face investigations over use of force.
- In Baltimore these protections have been blamed for getting in the way of properly investigating the 2014 death of Freddie Gray.
Their contracts in various ways can often make it very difficult to remove or discipline police officers… And there are a lot of protections provided to the police officers that go beyond what most of us would regard as fair and reasonable for employees.
Daniel Nagin, Carnegie Mellon University
Media
Police Unions vs Labor Unions In the News
Police Unions vs Labor
Click the button below download our document about why repealing Chapter 174 does not affect labor unions.
