It's confusing for me that so many people will complain about how the police unions prevent reform and allow for bad behavior -- but then support unions for all other public sector workers.

> It's confusing for me that so many people will complain about how the police unions prevent reform and allow for bad behavior -- but then support unions for all other public sector workers.

Policing is a unique role with incredibly perverse incentives, and it has special powers and protections granted to officers by the state that no other workers are granted. When an officer abuses their power, not only do their coworkers protect them, but the system that is supposed to provide checks and balances turns a blind eye to the abuse, and fights against justice every step of the way.

It is clear that this role, and the special status it incurs, is vastly different than other roles for government workers.

I'm not sure what is confusing about having a slightly nuanced view on unionization, especially when I gave my reasoning in both the post you're replying to and this post itself.

I recently encountered a Reddit comment that might clear your confusion, paraphrased thusly: "We never see the any teachers union consistently come out in defense of pedophiles amongst their members"

We see that all the time. You can read articles in major newspapers about the "rubber rooms" where teachers who can't be fired -- but who certainly also can't be put in front of a class -- are required to spend their workdays.

In at least one major school district, the beginning the year shuffle for matching the unfilled classrooms with the unwanted staffing is called the "Dance of the Lemons". Those that don't get an assignment are still clocking in every day at HQ & assigned useless tasks like creating lesson plans (that nobody will ever use).

Wouldn't that be great if violent cops were assigned to create Public Safety materials all day that went straight into the bin? They can't be fired so their job is to do something completely worthless until they quit.

Years ago, the police wronged me, and i raised a successful complaint. I got an apologetic phone call from an officer who, i got the impression, had the job of sitting in a police station making apologetic phone calls. He spent about forty seconds apologising, then went on an umprompted several-minute rant about how the police knew who all the criminals were, and if the government would just give them guns (this was in the UK), they could end crime tomorrow. I think it's simply connecting the dots to assume he was stuck on phone duty because he was a colossal liability to have walking around in public.

BLM protests showed the police to be quite useless in the UK.

Why can’t they be fired? AFAIK, tenure generally does not protect teachers who do grossly illegal acts, such as assaulting a student.

How do you know they've done it?

Do you have to leave them in front of kids teaching students until they're convicted?

What if that takes months? Or never actually happens? But the teacher has crossed the line inappropriately enough times that no parent wants their kid in the same room with him?

In the most positive light, a union might protect a genuinely good teacher being unfairly accused or targeted for political reasons from being put out of work. But sometimes following the processes for ensuring that can be so unreasonable to work through on a practical level that it's easier to just keep them employed but away from students until it gets resolved or they quit.

There's a famous PDF that gets shared when this comes up (although it's geared toward an incompetent teacher):

https://reason.com/wp-content/uploads/assets/db/126393089187...

US teacher salaries are abysmal. When education funding gets cut the school boards the unions successfully negotiate stronger employment protections (after all, if a job pays poorly you need to attract employees some other way, such as good PTO, benefits, or in this case: a job for life).

It’s also entirely possible that even without the unions, the school boards don’t want to get rid of bad teachers simply because they’re already, and chronically, understaffed.

US teacher salaries aren't nearly so bad as you're thinking. Median is around $60k, which compares favorably to the median household income of $59k - and teachers get better benefits, too.

Yes, it's not tech-level pay. But it's not exactly "abysmal" either.

Teacher salary is dependent on how wealthy the school district's tax constituents are, because education funding in the US comes from property taxes.

Given the amount of education, time and their own resources they're expected to put in to do their jobs, I wouldn't categorize them as "good", and would say generalizing their compensation as poor would be accurate given those points.

I’m not sure where that number comes from, but I know in my fairly high wealth state the maximum amount a teacher’s salary can be is about 45k. Benefits are about the average for that level of employment, nothing I’d call “better” than anything else. My ex is a teacher, and I make well over three times her salary. We both have Master’s degrees - that’s also required to be a teacher.

If police unions would do that to the officers who kill or beat prisoners, many people would be satisfied.

I would not be satisfied if my tax dollars paid the salary of police officers that killed and beat people, rubber room or otherwise.

I would be more satisfied with a rubber room than the scenario where they are paid to actively beat and kill people.

Clearly untrue. You've heard of the "rubber rooms" correct?

Public sector unions seem a little odd to me. The whole point of unions is to have collective bargaining power to deal with the bargaining power of corporations. That makes perfect sense... but isn't collective bargaining the point of having a democratic government?

I'm not saying having, say, a teachers' union is a bad thing. I just feel like it should be redundant.

Of course, the police are a special case even within the realm of public sector unions, because they're the ones enforcing the law anyway. It's one step removed from having a union of congresspeople, which really WOULD be completely redundant. What are they going to do? Petition themselves?

Collective bargaining evens out the power imbalances between workers and their employers. It doesn't really matter if the employer is the government or a private company. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make about collective bargaining and democracy since the two are unrelated.

There are other ways to handle public sector unions. For example, in Canada the military is not part of a union but their pay is tied to other public sector employees who are unionized. This makes sense since you don't want the military going on strike. When the union employees go on strike to get better pay and benefits the military also gets the same increases. You could do something similar in the US by tying police salaries and benefits to another public sector group like teachers or nurses. I have the feeling that this would be extremely unpopular with the police.

> Collective bargaining evens out the power imbalances between workers and their employers.

The reason it's strange is because if the government is a democracy (representative or direct), there should already be a mechanism for collective bargaining.

The fact that this is often insufficient strikes me as a pretty strong indictment of our systems of government.

I believe your argument is that in a democracy, public sector employees can vote for politicians who will represent their interests and this is equivalent to collective bargaining. Please let me know if I've misunderstood you because I don't want to argue against a straw man.

Let's consider teachers as an example. The top search result in Google tells me that 2% of the population of the US are teachers. With collective bargaining they can do work to rule, go on strike, and other job actions to pressure the government to improve working conditions. With voting they don't have a large enough voting block to push through candidates that will improve their working conditions. They would somehow need to convince over 48% of the population, assuming no gerrymandering, to also vote for the candidate that they want. That seems like a big thing to ask just to ensure an annual cost of living increase.

It's not just direct voting. There are plenty of other ways to influence culture to sway other voters.

And given the limited number of candidates and the frequency with which our elections come down to a few percent, they certainly wouldn't have to sway 48% of the population to influence how elected representatives treat them.

Can you give me an example, other than voting, of how democracy is collective bargaining?

You're not considering wedge issues? What if the candidate that would improve your working conditions also has a stance on an issue that you are strongly opposed to? For example, do you vote for the candidate who will give you a small raise but also disagrees with you on abortion? What if all of the candidates feel like siding with you would alienate more people than your voting bloc would bring?

Can you give me some examples, other than voting, of what constitutes democracy?

> You're not considering wedge issues?

Maybe our systems of government shouldn't have this weakness. This is what I was talking about when I mentioned the "strong indictment".

It appears like we've hit the max comment depth. This is really meant as a reply to your last comment in this thread.

Based on your last comment I think our disagreement is less about what makes a democracy and more about what constitutes collective bargaining. I don't see a difference between the examples you cited and a worker at a private company telling their neighbours to boycott the company until working conditions improve. Both of these are individual actions and unless they're organized at a larger scale the word "collective" doesn't really apply to either of them.

You're the one that wrote, "It's not just direct voting." I'm just asking for an example other than direct voting. I'm legitimately trying to understand your point but so far I still don't see the link between democracy and collective bargaining.

Well I need to know what your definition of "democracy" encompasses.

Examples of things other than direct voting include campaign contributions, talking to the media, going door to door. In the case of teachers, you could talk directly to parents during meetings.

There are all kinds of ways to influence elections that go well beyond simply casting your vote.

In a private company, there is also a mechanism for collective bargaining, without a union. The workers could just buy up all the outstanding stock, and replace the board.

And yet, nobody considers that to be sufficient to deny workers their right to organize.

That's generally only possible in a public company ("public" meaning "publicly traded"). Even then, I don't think the stockholders are under any obligation to sell to you, so you still may not be able to purchase a controlling interest in the company. So if the board holds a controlling interest, you're out of luck.

The politicians you elect, likewise, have no obligation to actually follow through on their campaign promises.

In the case of politicians, you can simply vote them out next election.

Board positions can be lifetime appointments.

This feels like quibbling. In both cases, the mechanism proposed as an alternative to collective bargaining is wildly unrealistic.

With a corporation, you need to buy a controlling interest of shares. With the "voting as collective bargaining" approach for public sector employees, you have a chance once in a while (depends where you live, but 4-5 years in most places) to try and convince a plurality of the overall population that the concerns of your profession outweigh the many, many other considerations people have in choosing who they vote for.

Either way, both options are not realistically achievable by nearly any union (ironically, I could see police as one exception - "tough on crime" policies, which are usually favourable to police unions, tend to be popular among voters, at least up until June 2020).

With voting, you don't actually have to convince a plurality. You only have to convince a small percentage of the population (often <5%) to sway an election.

> This makes sense since you don't want the military going on strike.

What’s unique here? Isn’t the whole point of all strikes that the employer doesn’t want the employees to go on strike?

Some services are more important than others. If teachers go on strike kids miss some school; if nurses go on strike people die. The military fits into the "people die" category in terms of likely consequences from a strike.

Edit: just to be clear, I don't mean to imply that teachers aren't important, just that the immediate consequences of them all missing work is less severe than some other occupations.

Do you really think that more people would die if the US military went on strike? Besides, the US military already has a mechanism to force people to work for the military.

My original comment was about the Canadian military and was an example of how groups like the police don't necessarily need unions so you're the one bringing the US military into this. I can't speak for the US military but the Canadian military is active domestically doing search and rescue, responding to natural disasters, counter terrorism, etc. People will die if those activities need to take place and the military is on strike. They doesn't account for other important work like embassy staff. I know the US military provides embassy security. How many people would die if no US embassies had armed people with guns protecting them?

It's also important to consider that when you're talking about the military who dies matters more than how many people die. How many civilian drone strike casualties would it take to get the same attention that Benghazi got?

What mechanism does the US military have to force people to work in the event that the whole military is on strike? Are they going to charge the entire military if they go on strike? Everybody walks down into the brig and the last man in locks the door behind them?

The US military has an active conscription program at their disposal.

Draftees won't be much help if the military is on strike. Let's take a quick look at how that would go.

A group of young adults gets drafted into the Army. They're told to show up at base Foo on some date for boot camp. They go to base Foo and cross the picket line to enter the base. All of the instructors are on strike so there is no one to teach them. They can't get uniforms and equipment because the quartermaster is also on strike. They head to the mess hall to get some food but the cooks are on strike. It's getting late and they want to sleep. The barracks for trainees is locked up and no one is around with the key because they're on strike.

Now you've got a group of tired, hungry people, who didn't want to be there in the first place, who have no training or equipment. How does this help?

Not really hard to find examples of this, isn't it?

National Guard are mobilized all the time during crisis such as Katrina or the ongoing covinavirus pandemic.

US military was the single largest contributor to the response effort to the 2010 Haiti earthquake [0]

They were also heavily involved in the relief operation in response to the 2015 Nepal earthquake [1]

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unified_Response [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sahayogi_Haat

Public sector unions exist because you have two groups of people with opposing needs/desires. The state wants to minimize budget while still providing services, and public workers want to make an appropriate wage for the work they do. The government is organized, so (IMO) there should be an organization on the other side of the table bargaining for the workers.

Wages are only part of the function of a union. An arguably more important part is preventing arbitrary and capricious management decisions, including retribution against employees for expressing grievances. A big part of what unions do day-in, day-out, is dispute resolution. A unionized meat factory isn't going to pay much better wages, if at all, than a non-unionized factory; but it would be significantly safer.

The thing is, the courts often grant Due Process protections to government employees on the theory that a government employer taking actions against an employee isn't too far removed from the government taking actions against any random citizen. At a minimum, the government almost always must follow some sort of reviewable investigatory procedure. Compared to at-will employment, the burden (however de minimis in an absolute sense) is much greater. The need for checks against malicious government managers is significantly reduced.

The upshot is that unions aren't as necessary in the case of government employees. The downshot is that even if you prevented unionization, the government would still have problems firing problematic employees. The issue is never that they can't be fired (union or not), but whether it's worth the hassle, which has a cost in terms of time & money.

> A unionized meat factory isn't going to pay much better wages, if at all, than a non-unionized factory; but it would be significantly safer.

Unionized workers make more than their non-union peers, and have significantly better benefits.

You can see a huge difference in pay and benefits with union and non-union construction workers and welders. One group is paid a living wage with benefits, and has options for retirement, and the other group makes barely more than minimum wage, has poor benefits if they're even classified as employees and not contractors, and they're on their own when it comes to retirement.

Similarly, white collar unionized workers make more than their non-union counterparts, too. They have higher pay, better benefits, and more paid time off.

"The state wants to minimize budget"

This is a joke statement right? There is no state in the history of the world that attempts to do this.

What nonsense, firstly OP clearly is specifically referring to the budget outlay for education, and even if taken more broadly I can assure you throughout the world there are plenty of governments whose spending is constrained by current income and who very much do aim to minimise expenditure for a given outcome (predictably often with the effect of greatly worsening outcomes).

Maybe you'd prefer it reframed as: elected officials want to minimize spending on line-items they don't care about in order to spend on things they do care about.

What are you talking about? Education budgets are almost comically prone to budget cuts, it's one of the most contentious facets of government spending (at least in the U.S.)

Maybe not in the states you’ve lived in, but this was very much the hypothesis behind Sam Brownback’s experiment in Kansas. Beliefs in a strong version of the crowding out effect result in states trying to cut their budgets.

>Public sector unions seem a little odd to me

You're not alone. George Meany, the first president of the AFL-CIO was opposed to the very idea of public sector unions. As was FDR. And virtually all union leaders through the mid-1950s.

The elected leaders represent distinctly different interests than public employees. For instance, in March, in NY state government, public employee union contracts didn't permit working from home in general. That was tightly restricted based on past negotiation. In order to respond to the pandemic crisis, they really dragged out giving permission to work remotely where possible.

I don't understand why anyone would think that the rank and file public employees are the same entity/interests as the elected officials or upper level management. You might as well say the employees who own a little company stock or get options at any random company don't need a union because they can vote their shares. Working conditions, due process, etc. always matter, in the face of management having an incentive to find shortcuts and such.

Public sector unions are really not the government negotiating with itself any more than a private company. Any time you have management answering to different interests than the workers, a conflict of interest exists so a union has an obvious purpose. If actual unions are bad or corrupt, that's not the same as an issue in the abstract.

The point of unions is to attempt to counter the immense imbalance of power between employers and employees that often exists. That can certainly exist with public jobs just like it can with private jobs.

It's a balancing act. With no unions, employers can stomp all over their employees, and everyone is worse for it (e.g. Amazon). When the unions are too powerful, they can stomp all over their employer and everyone is worse for it (e.g. police unions).

Like all things in life, nothing is cut and dry. It's not wrong to both support unions, and call for the reduction in power of police unions.

As a point, original comments are only referring to "public sector" unions. The mal-alignment contrasts from private unions being organized by private individuals who's interests conflict against that of the private industry.

Public sector unions "bosses" are the people and politicians, so even though these are "private" unions, their alignment is to protect the political class first, cops (members) second, people third. By focusing on politic over people (bad looking cops = lost mayor, DA political race) their primary interested is not public transparency (where the money comes from, leading to lack of consumer alignment on service rendered b/c cops are serving political interests more than they should).

In a private union, the first people they are protecting are their membership (lot could be said here about how that works in practice), but their transparency problem isn't regarding factory deaths or issues at the work place because that is precisely what they are created to bring awareness to. If Ford's cars are killing people, the union actually wants to bring that up since it can hurt employment opportunities for future members.

Another comment in the thread

> Collective bargaining evens out the power imbalances between workers and their employers. It doesn't really matter if the employer is the government or a private company. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make about collective bargaining and democracy since the two are unrelated. There are other ways to handle public sector unions. For example, in Canada the military is not part of a union but their pay is tied to other public sector employees who are unionized. This makes sense since you don't want the military going on strike. When the union employees go on strike to get better pay and benefits the military also gets the same increases. You could do something similar in the US by tying police salaries and benefits to another public sector group like teachers or nurses. I have the feeling that this would be extremely unpopular with the police

The biggest problem facing Amazon workers isn't unionization. It is the not having alternatives to earning a similar wage in more humane conditions.

You're confused that people have one set of standards for the providers of trash removal and another set of standards for people authorized to commit state-sanctioned murder?

The two are kind of distinct.

The point though is that unions, wherever they are present in the public sector, tend to create uniformly sub-pair service. This is true for teachers, it's true for cops, and it's true basically wherever public sector unions are to be found.

Do you have any sources to back this up? My understanding is that non-unionized groups like charter schools do not outperform public schools. Many charter schools appear to outperform but once you account for the fact that they can choose their students, removing all of the low performers and putting them in the public system, they no longer show a benefit.

This is a super politicized issue, but my understanding is that the evidence that they're better is actually pretty good. Here's a fairly comprehensive set of studies by Stanford:

https://credo.stanford.edu/studies/charter-school-studies

You do want to read carefully, because Charter schools are often mixed by 'online' and 'brick and mortar'. When you aggregate these two, Charter schools as a group tend to match or underperform traditional public schools. But this is primarily because online charter schools do substantially worse. When you disaggregate the brick-and-mortar charters, they usually overperform traditional public schools, though not totally uniformly. And these studies do try to do matched control of students, to account for that selection effect.

Thank you for the link. I agree that this is a very politicized issue and that can make finding objective info tricky.

I checked out the first case study and it looks like you are correct that the brick and mortar charter schools significantly outperform the online ones. However, at least in that study, the brick and mortar charters slightly outperformed public schools in reading but underperformed in math. However, I don't believe these differences were statistically significant. While there probably are some states where charter schools outperform they seem to only perform the same as public schools in South Carolina. To me this doesn't add much weight to the argument that unions lead to worse teaching outcomes. I will also say that I'm not an expert, my cursory reading of one report doesn't change that fact, and I'm definitely open to changing my opinion on this in the future but I don't have the time or interest to read all of the reports in the link.

So, it's certainly not the case that charters are uniformly better in every case. There's quite a bit of variation. The basic idea behind charter schools is that they eliminate the union (that's almost literally their entire purpose). But what that does is it allows them the freedom to experiment with new styles of education, without filtering it through the bureaucracy of the union. In effect, that means there's going to be a lot more variation in outcomes amongst charters, particularly at first. Over time, as people figure out what works and what doesn't, I would expect to see them continue to widen the gap between themselves and traditional public schools.

On the surface it's not obvious that this is attributable to the union. But if you dig in a little bit to what actually differentiates charter schools, the main thing is the absence of the teacher's union. At least, to my understanding, from operating in the space a little bit, and from people I know that operate more deeply in it than I did.

> There's quite a bit of variation. The basic idea behind charter schools is that they eliminate the union (that's almost literally their entire purpose).

That's not the public position of charter schools. Charter schools are based on the idea that more flexibility will give better results, that has nothing to do with unions. The flexibility comes largely from not being pushed around by the school board and subject to testing and limits. Unions are willing to be flexible with education structure

The fact that most charter schools insist on no unions is what drives much of the opposition which sees them as a bad faith stalking horses for people who want to destroy union power. If charter schools were universally unionized there would be much less opposition!

Compare with magnet schools which are unionized. (But still have to deal with school board oversight)

> Over time, as people figure out what works and what doesn't, I would expect to see them continue to widen the gap between themselves and traditional public schools.

I don't see the evidence for this. Studies show Charter schools perform no better then regular public schools. Some places that have really crappy public schools may try to turn to more charter schools on the chance that on average they might be better but I'd say reforming the regular school system would work better (even though it might be harder)

> That's not the public position of charter schools. Charter schools are based on the idea that more flexibility will give better results, that has nothing to do with unions. The flexibility comes largely from not being pushed around by the school board and subject to testing and limits. Unions are willing to be flexible with education structure

I agree that it's not the message they transmit. And i'm basically relying on my own personal experience and relationships for guidance here, so I don't necessarily expect you to be convinced. I'm just telling you what i've heard, and what my understanding is.

> I don't see the evidence for this. Studies show Charter schools perform no better then regular public schools. Some places that have really crappy public schools may try to turn to more charter schools on the chance that on average they might be better but I'd say reforming the regular school system would work better (even though it might be harder)

Read the studies I linked earlier in the thread. They do not perform the same.

Can you point to anything specific that addresses the objection raised? Nobody contests that brick and mortar charter schools have higher performance - the issues come down to the resources they receive and the fact that they have unique abilities to shape their admission.

It's in the studies, but the gist is that they try to compare 'matched students'. So, they try to remove the selection effects by comparing comaprable pupils in each school type. I'm sure it's possible to quibble with exactly how they do this, of course.

The best k-12 schools in the US are in states that have teachers unions, so maybe go rethink your hypothesis.

That's a strange way of framing things. Anyways, here's some actual evidence:

https://credo.stanford.edu/studies/charter-school-studies

Be sure to read it carefully, and disaggregate the online charter schools from the brick and mortar.

You can't take the stats of a charter school vs its district peers and extrapolate that to the state level. It's also notable that Massachusetts doesn't have a recent report.

I also took a look at the 2019 Washington (my state) press release with the following bullet point:

o School level findings identified several charter schools with significantly positive impacts, as much as 165 and 189 more days of learning in reading and math, respectively, compared to the learning they would have realized in traditional public schools. Conversely, some charters significantly underperformed their local school options by as much as 106 and 83 fewer days of learning in reading and math, respectively

I'm not saying that charter schools aren't useful, what I am willing to say is that charter schools provide a good solution to a particular problem that has more to do school quality being tied to local tax revenue than unions.

I think it's more about options. Charter schools have the freedom to experiment with new ideas, which means their outcomes are likely to be more variable. Some will be better than traditional schools, some will be worse. But over time, that freedom to experiment should converge to an overall higher standard of education. At least, that's the theory, but the data seem consistent with that so far.

Imagine if the army was unionized, and started lobbying the government for whether we should participate in wars or not. Or more worryingly, lobbied for change to rules of engagement. Add to that, the fact that everyone in the military was in the union, from the lowest level recruits to the generals. This is as opposed to other unions where management are typically excluded.

Ah, the traditional military coup popular in Latin America. Turkey used to have the military as an unofficial brake on the islamism of the government, but they finally managed have a purge and consolidate power.

The army already has top-down centralized control, right? Much more so than most big organizations. Clearly the army can already choose whether to participate in wars or not, that's what they do. They don't even need to lobby to change rules of engagement, if they chose to change things it would happen. Of course we hope and expect them to follow the rules, but it's not like "letting" them technically unionize would somehow fundamentally change anything.

It's a question of tradeoffs between professional accountability and improved working conditions in a given field, based on factors like how bad things can get in that field without accountability, how well (or poorly) employees are currently treated and paid, how likely employees are to take advantage of unaccountability, etc.

People very much care about accountability when it comes to law enforcement, because compared to regular employees in most fields they have very direct and outsized power over society. And police aren't exactly underpaid either.

> And police aren't exactly underpaid either.

To drive this point home, the median salary before overtime and bonuses is $105,106/year for cops[1], and with overtime, cops can earn over $250,000/year[2].

The median salary for software engineers in the same state is 10% lower than the $105k police salary before overtime and bonuses.

[1] https://www.nj.com/news/2017/05/how_much_is_the_median_cop_s...

[2] https://www.nj.com/somerset/2019/11/4-cops-in-this-nj-town-e...

Side point: I think it's a bad idea to let cops work OT. I understand that preventing OT would create logistical issues, but I think they're solvable, and for the safety of everyone - including police - I think we should want officers to be as clear-headed as possible.

Why? I am agnostic with regards to public sector unions, but I'm pretty convinced that unions for people who exert force on behalf of the state are always bad.

Other public sector workers aren't issued guns. Other public sector workers don't fight against any transparency into their actions. Other public sector workers don't murder people on a regular basis and get away with it. Other public sector workers don't seize assets from people unconstitutionally under civil asset forfeiture. Other public sector workers don't regularly lie under oath to keep their buddies out of jail, or to put people they don't like in jail. Other public sector workers don't kill a dog every hour.

The entire point of unions is to empower the oppressed. But the police have over and over demonstrated that they are not the oppressed, they are the oppressors.

The issue here isn’t that police unions exist - they can exist and protect the rights of their members without influencing policymaking. The issue is that public policy can be influenced by any special interest group with deep pockets.

There’s a clear difference between police and other public sector jobs, namely that we allow them to use force in our name. I think everyone agrees that having army unions is a bad thing too, even those who support teachers unions

Well, one possible reason is that even if people support unions in general, they don't support one engaging in behavior they think is corrupt, illegal, or unethical.

What other public sector workers carry guns?

Because police are not workers. They are tools of the state to violently enforce their laws.

Unions can be both very good and very bad. That’s how power works.

Particularly in America, the police exist primarily to enforce class/racial divides (this is not hyperbole -- one of the best quick introductions I know of came out quite recently and is a very worthwhile read or listen: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/05/870227945/nprs-history-podcas... ). This is fundamentally contrary to the politics of a labor union, which is to empower those who perform labor to negotiate on equal footing with those who would claim the bulk of the productive output of that labor.

Both would fall under the aegis of "collective bargaining", but the social aims of the two couldn't be more different: the maintenance of a stratified class system vs the dismantling of same.

In the UK it’s illegal for the police to unionise for exactly that reason.

But the police federation and ACPO perform similar political functions. At least we have the IPCC which sometimes works.

(We also used to have a paramilitary organization with close ties to a police force that went around murdering dissidents, but we disbanded the Royal Ulster Constabulary. And, surprisingly, the full tanks and snipers in the streets civil war wasn't quite as deadly as 80s Detroit)

Police in the UK are prohibited from taking any form of industrial action - so the Federation does not have the ability to create disruption (to forcibly get their way) in the way Police Unions in North America can (and frequently do).

The Federation represents officers up to Chief Inspector, the Association of Police Superintendents represents more senior officers, but below Chief Officer rank.

ACPO is for Chief Police Officers and is quite different. You should not conflate that as serving the same purpose at the Federation of AsPS.

Police in the US are also legally prohibited from industrial action. The fact that they do it anyway is just more evidence that they are out of control. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/01/what-is-bl...

British police officers might be prohibited from taking industrial action, but in 2004 many firearms officers protested by refusing to carry out their usual duties: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3973261.stm

Those unions wouldn't have the power they do without the unconditional support of many American voters.

Police union endorsements have a lot of sway.

I'm late to throw my 2c in, but it's worth noting all the nordic countries have police unions that enjoy strong support.

There isn't really a specific indicator that the unions are the problem with the police, and it's quite possible our focus on them is putting the cart before the horse.

The labor movement has long opposed police having unions, as they’ve always served Capital owners whenever workers need intimidated or a strike needs broken. They’re de facto opposed to the collective action of all other workers.

But don't worry, the police only elect the best to be the leaders of their unions.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/eric-zorn/ct-column-c...

A billion dollars? That's a lot larger than what I've seen before -- $15 million according to http://nomorecopmoney.com/

So are you against all government unions? What about quasi-gov orgs like SEC? Or teachers? Just trying to understand where you fall on the “unions for me but not thee” scale

When the SEC and teachers are capable of using the authority of the State to take my life with qualified immunity for civil rights violations all while abusing overtime and other overpayment techniques and their unions go to bat for them, I will call for an end to their unions.

> When the SEC and teachers are capable of using the authority of the State to take my life with qualified immunity

Teachers are covered by QI just as much as cops, and there is much less past precedent on use of force by teachers. Since QI works on the principle of “the absence of precedent covering similar actors in similar circumstances and ruling it unlawful means you can't be held liable”, they probably are more able to do that covered by QI.

OTOH, they have less practical opportunity to apply force.

Yes, in theory, teachers are covered by QI, however, in practice 2 things are different:

1 is that there are extremely few cases of QI for teachers, QI is used primarily by police officers

2 is that the unions don't back teachers that come up on QI charges. They don't run clinics on how to use QI to jutify harming someone or other clinics like Killology.

> 1 is that there are extremely few cases of QI for teachers, QI is used primarily by police officers

To the extent that's true, it's because people don't sue teachers personally as a way of getting some largely symbolic measure of justice for things that are actually crimes but where public prosecutors won't prosecute, because teachers don't benefit from the same working relationship with prosecutors that police have.

> 2 is that the unions don't back teachers that come up on QI charges

There are no such things as QI charges, and unions do, in fact, back teachers sued for discretionary acts, the space where QI applies. Which is why education groups have raised concerns about the pressure to end QI.

1. there is no reason to be pedantic about the language around QI. We are not in court, so you're not impressing anyone with your "actually" non-sense. Any reasonable person can infer that I was talking about cases in which QI would be used as a justification to absolve the officer of responsability.

2. Your first rebuttal point reinforces my point, in practice there are very few cases that result in QI being used w.r.t. teachers.

3. I think most of us can agree that QI shouldn't apply to teachers or officers or any other State actor and is legal non-sense created by junk judicial interpretation.

> Teacher are covered by QI just as much as cops, and there is much less past precedent on use of force by teachers.

Are they? I think it's hard to answer that question precisely, since qualified immunity is not a law that has been passed but a collection of judicial interpretations. Wikipedia says that it applies to 'government officials', and, even if one takes Wikipedia as definitive, it's not clear to me that that should apply to schoolteachers. The only real way to test whether qualified immunity applies to teachers would be to have it be used in a court case. Has it been?

> Are they?

The modern interpretation of QI, while all the current news coverage comes from police officers, comes from a case in which White House advisors in the Nixon Administration were being sued over their involvement in a defense contracting dispute, and applies to government employees exercising any discretionary functions, categorically.

> The only real way to test whether qualified immunity applies to teachers would be to have it be used in a court case. Has it been?

Yes. An extensive discussion relevant to public education, with some case citations, is here: https://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25919821&bcid=25919821&r...

It has, Safford Unified School District v. Redding is probably the canonical case here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safford_Unified_School_Distric...

Less opportunity to apply force but plenty to inflict lifelong damage.

Or at least massive opportunity cost and stunting or misdirection.

Teachers and police should be both way better paid and we should demand a lot more from both. These shouldn't be jobs you just get because they are easy(ish) to qualify for and have retirement and you can't ever get fired. We really need some of our best people in both.

If you think it is easy to become a teacher, boy do I have news for you.

It can't be too difficult based on many of those I had.

The difficulty to become a teacher is in no way correlated with the ability to teach.

What I was referring to was intelligence, not ability to teach.

And, factually, yes, it is pretty easy to become a teacher. Thanks for your opinion to the contrary though, I'll consider it.

These questions underly a particular argument that I don’t buy. We institute fairly hefty national standards on schools. I can go and look up the average scores for standardized tests for students for the high school I attended, and, afaik, essentially all schools in the US. Why can’t I do the same thing for police departments?

Somehow, police unions are able to avoid having similar accountability.

Teachers unions often fight standardized testing as well. They just haven't been as successful.

The reason for fighting standardized testing has nothing to do with transparency.

If you accept that a labour union represents collective bargaining of labour against capital, and you accept that government workers do not need to negotiate with capital, then you must conclude that government employees don't need to be unionised.

> and you accept that government workers do not need to negotiate with capital

Government workers negotiate with capital; they don't negotiate with private capital, but state capital is still capital.

The one whose members consist of individuals with the ability to detain, assault and murder you, often with impunity via the thin veneer of "I was in fear for my life".

What if they can support fabricate such evidence that you’re considered a criminal?

I am not op, and I don't get the sense that you are asking the question in good faith based on the snark, but will give you my thought:

Our need for accountability and oversight over jobs that involve the ability to use deadly force outweighs their need for collective bargaining power. The greater good, at least presently, is served by being able to scrutinize police conduct with less interference.

I don't think police unions created this problem, but I think they are helping perpetuate it.

Given that police officers

(a) are first-responders whose central job is public safety,

(b) are regularly sent into situations where their life and safety is on the line (6 have been shot to death in the past two months), and

(c) regularly face violent and hateful prejudice as an identity, just for putting on the uniform,

it's hard to justify that they don't deserve advocacy from a group of people with shared experiences.

It doesn't mean that unions should always get their way or that unions should be officially recognized, but police can and should exercise their rights to collectively bargain and strike if necessary.

(a) This is a fantastic argument for why they should not be able to collectively bargain and strike. They are civil servants, not labor working for capital owners.

(b) You grossly overstate the danger of being a police officer. According to the Department of Labor, being a police officer is not in the top 10 most dangerous jobs in the US. It is, in fact, slightly more dangerous than being an electrician, and significantly safer than driving a cab. (https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfar0020.pdf)

(c) I think you are being hyperbolic. The intense criticism they are facing today is earned. Not because all, or even most officers are bad, but because they consistently protect the ones that are, and aggressively defend the worst among them.

They can have advocacy, but their ability to collectively bargain with us (our government is us) and constantly circle the wagons and protect their own is net harmful to our society.

My point is that this becomes an issue in every part of life when dealing with the government.

And yet, the same people arguing for abolishment of police also want to expand the government beyond anything it’s ever done. They give no thought to the unintended consequences instead crying “but think of the children”. I see I’m getting down voted heavily, so clearly my ideas aren’t valued here, but it’s kinda mind blowing that so many people here can hold these hypocritical ideas in their head at the same time.

> My point is that this becomes an issue in every part of life when dealing with the government.

What is "this" that covers universal healthcare, police, schools, environmental regulations, food safety, workplace safety etc?

Many people believe that there are parts of social life which are too important to entrust to privately-controlled, peofit-driven hands. The only alternative in our society is to entrust them to local, state or federal government. The reason why is that, unlike private entities, we the people actually have some amount of control over the government.

Now, when we see parts of government consistently escape any kind of control, like police or intelligence agencies, then we start demanding something to be done about it. If police unions are part of the problem, as it seems they are, then those also need to change, or be removed. Schools are not in any way near the same level of out-of-control as police have been shown to be.

People are downvoting you because you are clearly not arguing in good faith, using phrases like "think of the children," which is a phrase used nowhere near as often as certain groups claim it is, while they parody it to shut down opposing viewpoints in discussion.

That being said, I'd also like to point out that "abolish the police" isn't saying "remove police entirely." It is saying that police, in their current state, should not exist. It's saying that police not be the ones who handle someone having a psychotic episode, and that part of the money going towards police should fund trained healthcare professionals instead. That police shouldn't be handling the homelessness problem, and we could redirect some of their funding to create public housing instead of throwing them in jail over and over. We shouldn't have police handle truant students, and arresting them certainly shouldn't be the only option available if they continue to do so.

It comes down to the fact that police forces and unions have too much power. And of course that leads into the larger discussion of the fact that police can say "we thought this person was committing a crime" and steal everything in your car with almost no recourse to get it back. That police have incentives to make any given arrest at the end of their shift to accrue overtime, and that most police organizations have no limits on the amount they can accrue. That police forces are getting increasingly militarized even as violent crime is going down worldwide. Or that they can shoot and kill almost anyone and say "well I felt that my life was in danger" and that's the end of the discussion. And that if in the unlikely event they are fired, they still keep their pension and can be hired a precinct over with no repercussion. That there are no means for reasonable oversight of these organization to make sure they are acting in the public's best interest. That police unions actively fight to keep all of these policies in place instead of working to build trust in their organizations so that we don't have these problems in the first place.

It's not a discussion of "I only want the parts of the government that I like to have funding," it's an objective look at an arm of the government that has far more power than it should by pushing every existing law and statute to the limit while everyone looks the other way, and an objective view at what society-benefiting services we could fund (that would reduce the need for police in the first place) if we chose to fund them instead of massive police forces. If we had an education system where you had one teacher the entirety of your career, who had no oversight on the curriculum they taught, could assign grades at random based on how they liked each student, that was unable to be terminated, and if they did lost absolutely nothing, you can bet that we'd be here protesting that as well.

Just for the record, I draw the line at police unions as long as there isn't significant oversight in both policing and the union itself.

If their track record wasn't abysmal when it comes to abuse of power, I would be less likely to see a problem with police unions. However, that isn't the case, hence my opinion on the matter.