
Police unions aren't “unions” in the traditional sense - vo2maxer
https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1288130941072769025
======
crazygringo
This is a silly argument. His assertion that the union isn't "interested in
helping cops" is ludicrous, his actual points completely contradict this (e.g.
their pension). Also his notion that "real unions" are about "public interest"
is similarly nonsensical -- unions are primarily about benefiting their
members, as they should be.

He also completely misses a much stronger point, which is that there _is_ a
crucial difference between private-sector unions and public-sector unions.
Which is that private-sector unions are _necessary_ because there's no other
mechanism for employees to reach a collective agreement. But in the public
sector, there is: the ballot box, i.e. all democratic policy ever. Collective
decision-making takes place in the legislature.

In this sense, there's an argument to be made that police unions, teacher's
unions, etc. are unnecessary and fundamentally anti-democratic. If Coca-Cola
workers go on strike that's fine, we can just buy Pepsi. If police and
teachers go on strike, the nation suffers -- government unions essentially
break the democratic social contract by declaring "we disagree with the
democratic decision of the people and will hold the city/country hostage". One
could make the argument that in the private sector it's simply negotiation,
while in the public sector it's extortion.

Now it's not actually that simple in practice -- after all, democratic
representation and legislation often doesn't work as well as it's supposed to.
But then again, police and teachers' unions seem to be arguably just as bad of
a mess.

~~~
newen
> But in the public sector, there is: the ballot box, i.e. all democratic
> policy ever. Collective decision-making takes place in the legislature.

Do not like this argument. I know you acknowledge it later but there are so
many problems with this. It assumes that some 0.5% of the population can
affect the results of elections in any consistent manner, that they would even
vote consistently given that they probably would have diverse politics, that
politicians would care about problems (which can be some bureaucratic minutia)
that they have, etc.

If teacher's unions didn't exist, you would never even hear about complaints
that teachers have in the political arena except some pity article written by
a journalist about the troubles that teachers have.

~~~
JAlexoid
There's a problem with public sector unions - they make a contract with 0.01%
of the population, but the rest of the population gets to adhere to that
contract.

If teachers want to have unions - they should be free.

If police officers want to go on a strike - they should be free to do so.

What I disagree with - is that police unions take hostage the whole
legislative process and force their own interests without a broad debate.

Take police infraction reports in New York - police unions got their members
infraction records sealed by law.

Any legal mandate for union or any legal mandate against a union is bad.

~~~
newen
Yes, police unions need to be heavily regulated since they have so much power
both politically and in terms of what kind of levers they can pull. For
example, there was a story about Minnesota police slowing down their responses
to areas in which their city council representative voted against the
interests of the police union.

But the narrow question of whether the police need a union or not, I think
they do because they need representation etc., the same reasons why any
employee, public or otherwise, needs a union.

------
snowwrestler
If police unions aren't "unions," why are some of them part of the AFL-CIO,
the largest collection of unions in the nation?

Police unions are unions--according to other unions.

I think it would be more intellectually honest of Cory to admit that unions
are not automatically or inherently contributors to social progress, but
rather are forms of organization that must be available in order to create the
potential for social progress.

Put another way, objecting to what police unions do is not proof of a flaw
with unionization in general. It's just disagreement with what those specific
union leaders choose to do with the power afforded to them by the union form.

Progressives are plenty comfortable making this kind of argument about
nonprofit organizations. It's perfectly consistent to like the ACLU and
dislike the NRA, for example, even though they're both nonprofits.

~~~
ihumanable
The call-to-action at the end of the thread is a call for the AFL-CIO to sever
its ties with Police Unions.

Basically the entire thread is "Here are all the reasons, AFL-CIO, that you
shouldn't associate with these unions anymore."

Using the fact that the AFL-CIO does support them is a bit of a tautological
dead-end, because of course they do, otherwise this thread attempting to
persuade them not to wouldn't exist.

Just in case anyone didn't get to the end of the twitter thread, the last
tweet is as follows:

[https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1288130980650205184?s=20](https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1288130980650205184?s=20)

Fixing policing is a long road, but it must start. We can begin by getting the
@AFLCIO to sever all ties with police "unions."

eof/

~~~
snowwrestler
I just don't think anyone will get a sympathetic ear at the AFL-CIO if the
lead is "I'm going to tell you what unions really are." The AFL-CIO
undoubtedly thinks they are qualified to make that determination for
themselves.

Honestly I doubt the AFL-CIO leadership will listen to anyone on this topic
unless there is pressure from their membership, like if other unions start
threatening to disaffiliate over policing issues.

~~~
washadjeffmad
It puts the members who side with a Police lobby-as-union on notice to others
and to the public. It's the start of a movement to reform or quit.

------
finnthehuman
Doctorow's arguments seems to fall into the categories of 1) police unions
exist for the benefit of their members not for society at large, and 2) a list
of things not to like about the police in general, not their unions.

It's a decent list if you just want to get someone hot under the collar about
the police, but not for arguing that their unions are nontraditional in any
sense other than the type of job their union represents.

~~~
finnthehuman
I just see contortion to avoid admitting that it's both possible and
reasonable for generally pro-union people to disagree with any specific union.
That's ground he doesn't want to cede to people that might be less positive on
unions overall.

But it's a crazy stance to take. For any goal it's possible for a group or
organization to work towards, there is going to be a non-zero number of
perfectly-typical groups doing it that people don't like.

There's a pizza shop downtown that I think makes retched pizza, but I also
know people who think they're the best in town. Doesn't mean I go around
saying they're "not a traditional pizza shop" because I'm afraid of looking
anti-pizza when I say I'm not joining you for lunch if that's where you're
going.

~~~
joshribakoff
I believe a more accurate metaphor would be if the pizza shop was known for
regularly stealing people’s money, or assaulting their patrons. In that case
they would in fact not be a traditional pizza shop and there would be no
confusion about you being anti pizza.

You’re the one using contortion here in my opinion.

------
metalliqaz
They should stop calling them unions and just call them "brotherhoods", which
is more accurate.

"Just a few bad apples" is never continued to complete the phrase; "spoil the
barrel".

I think nearly all the trouble could be fixed if police understood one small
thing: good cops that protect bad cops aren't good cops.

~~~
injb
>They should stop calling them unions and just call them "brotherhoods", which
is more accurate.

Like "International Brotherhood of Teamsters", or "International Brotherhood
of Electrical Workers", or "United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of
America" ?

~~~
metalliqaz
yes, exactly

~~~
newen
His point was they are all unions... It doesn't matter what you call a union.
It's still a union.

~~~
metalliqaz
In the OP's twitter thread, Doctorow makes the point that unions operate with
solidarity to other unions, but the Police unions don't.

------
cafard
They don't carry lunch buckets to mine adits or factory gates? I'm willing to
hear such arguments for SAG-AFTRA or NFLPA. But the tweeter seems to use "in
the traditional sense" as meaning "having a cool image among my friends".

Calvin Coolidge first attracted national attention when he helped to break the
Boston police strike in 1919. There are a fair number of unions that can't
trace their history back to 1919.

------
olliej
The history of the police is filled with police launching violent assaults on
every other union.

They're a union in the same way they're law abiding citizens: the rules don't
apply to them, and they'll physically attack anyone they feel like.

------
Havoc
The way they actively leverage their collective power to protect individuals
that are painfully obvious in the wrong is kinda alarming.

Sets a very dangerous precedent for "wrong (possibly fatal) decision has no
consequences"

------
InfiniteRand
It’s a narrowly political argument, you need to show solidarity with
progressive politics to be a union (and not breaking up strikes is
insufficient)

~~~
klyrs
If you define "workers' rights" as progressive politics then you've kinda hit
the nail on the head.

------
LatteLazy
As a brit, it seems like there are dozens of causes of US police brutality.
Everyone has a favourite cause which fits their wider political/social point
of view. Then they just talks about that one, ignoring all the others and
their respective solutions.

~~~
gnusty_gnurc
It's hard to build a coalition to end police brutality if you basically ignore
the majority of cases in favor of focusing on the _relative_ differences
across races wrt population size (even ignoring the frequency of crimes in
those populations).

------
throwawaysea
This just seems like a very skewed take.

> Front-line workers' unions like teachers and nurses strike to improve
> conditions for the people they care for; police unions' main cause is
> reducing oversight and accountability, waging a decades-long war on civilian
> oversight boards.

Teachers also wage war on accountability. They resist every attempt to measure
their performance (for example through standardized tests), never suggesting
alternative approaches where they see a flaw in methodology. Most recently
teacher unions have started mixing demands for safer reopening plans with a
mix of other wholly unrelated demands - asking for charter schools/parental
choice to be abolished, asking for police defunding, asking for Medicare for
all, etc ([https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/l-a-teachers-union-
say...](https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/l-a-teachers-union-says-schools-
cant-reopen-unless-charter-schools-shut-down-and-police-are-defunded)). These
have nothing to do with safer reopening plans. The teacher unions want
protection from accountability by squashing competition (charter schools) and
they are bundling this ask with an ask for safer reopening plans and police
defunding to garner public support. But make no mistake these are political
games.

In Seattle earlier this year, nurses in one hospital system went on strike
([https://apnews.com/106ced24f239ea09b709e8959c385e45](https://apnews.com/106ced24f239ea09b709e8959c385e45)).
They marketed the strike as pushing for better nurse to patient ratios but it
really was about pay. The hospital had offered a generous pay increase out of
the gate that was better than what another medical group had recently offered
its own workers, who accepted the new package. The increased pay at this other
hospital was the motivation for these other nurses to strike, but the striking
nurses rejected that generous offer and demanded double the increase. The
strike resulted in numerous patients having procedures delayed by months
(waiting for openings in schedule) and expecting mothers scrambling to deliver
elsewhere and so forth. I don’t see how their strike served patients at all.

The reality is that all unions bring with them dynamics of power that they use
to serve their own member’s interests. They often market benefits to the
public or other parties to present their demands in a less offensive way, but
their core purpose is to serve their own member’s interests. The lack of
competition can cause many negative behaviors - that happens across the board
whether we are taking about police or teachers or nurses. Cory Doctorow’s
Twitter defense, trying to separate out police unions from all other unions,
makes no sense and just seems biased.

~~~
joshribakoff
Teachers aren’t against measuring progress they’re against tests that have
been shown to not help the children but instead detract from learning useful
things and instead encourage memorization. I recall wasting entire quarters in
school learning “meta” subjects about the FCAT. Utterly useless. And biased
towards minorities

No nurses are unionizing for lack of oversight asking to “make hospitals great
again”. Asking for a better nurse to patient ratio really isn’t comparable to
asking to rollback reforms and oversights. Complete apples to oranges
comparison there

~~~
finnthehuman
I don't pay any attention to educational policy. What evaluation metrics do
the teacher's groups support?

------
woodandsteel
A key part of conservative political philosophy is a set of arguments that the
people in governmental bureaucracies are invariable incompetent and act
against the welfare of the larger society.

There is, however, one simple way to cure this problem. That is to give them
guns and the right to use them in circumstances where ordinary citizens can't.

~~~
woodandsteel
I should have been clear that the idea about guns is what conservatives
believe, not that I think it is correct.

------
6510
If they do a rally the army should be there to control it.

------
badmadrad
more deceptive apologia from socialists

of course police unions are unions. unions have always been self interested to
the needs of the members of that union even if its add odds of health and well
being of people dependent on those workers.

this is the whole anarcho-syndicalist fantasy in a nutshell. collective
bargaining will inevitably put you at odds with other groups and their needs.
its just collective selfishness instead of individual selfishness. nd usually
its not even the whole group its the influential and charismatic leaders of
the union who drag everyone in a certain direction. little stalins.

