
Want to Reform Policing? Bust Police Unions - jseliger
https://reason.com/2020/07/17/want-to-reform-policing-bust-police-unions
======
CryptoPunk
The same applies to every other industry where unions predominate.

~~~
olliej
Nope. Unions formed to protect employees from the abuses of management. The
last 30-40 years of continuously reduced union power has resulted directly in
reduced worker protections, employer liability, and a more or less complete
freeze on compensation.

Police unions are very very different from any other union - to the extent
that the most common interaction between the police unions and other unions is
when police come in as violent strike breakers.

~~~
CryptoPunk
The evidence does not support this PR narrative propagated by unions and
unionized workers.

The evidence suggests that the largest factor causing a slowdown in wage
growth since the 1970s is a slowdown is labor productivity growth:

[https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/sources-of-real-wage-
stag...](https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/sources-of-real-wage-stagnation/)

This slowdown can be attributed in part to the loss in economic efficiency and
competitiveness brought about by society empowering unions with laws
suppressing contract liberty.

With a few exceptions, like the Screen Actors Guild and the movie industry,
industries where unions took over became less competitive and contracted if
they failed to outsource. This extends from US Steel, to the US passenger rail
service (which the "brotherhoods" bankrupted), to the Big Three US automakers.

With respect to the last point: Detroit used to be the US city with the
highest per capita income. Today it is completely dilapidated. That is the
real legacy of the anti-competitive unions and the stranglehoods labor laws
gave them over capitalist enterprise.

The new successes of American industry and sources of US export growth: Tesla
and Amazon, are next on the chopping block for the social activists pushing
for unionization with the labor union movement's victimhood culture
narratives.

The monopolization of a workforce by a union is detrimental to
efficiency/quality and the accountability of workers in every
endeavor/industry, not just policing.

Here is evidence of the detrimental effect of teachers unions on education:

[https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-
abstract/111/3/671/1839...](https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-
abstract/111/3/671/1839935)

>>Police unions are very very different from any other union - to the extent
that the most common interaction between the police unions and other unions is
when police come in as violent strike breakers.

Source?

Police were NOT unionized in the 19th and early 20th century, before unions
got the backing of government force (labor laws), when they had to resort to
illegal violence, like picket lines that were enforced with physical assault,
to shakedown employers.

Since the unions' suppression of contract liberty got government backing,
strikes involving illegal violence have become unnecessary for the unions to
engage in, and violent clashes between unions and police have all but
disappeared.

