You can’t touch a single police officer without them throwing a hissy fit and shutting everything down.
And they only got there by striking and work actions because the nature of their positions gave them the leverage needed to be effective. The NYPD can’t ship the factory to another country or bring in immigrant labour to do policing. If they aren’t policing, property rights won’t be enforced for businesses. Leverage. The police are the mechanism that break labour strikes and protests on behalf of capital. There is no such mechanism to break a police strike or protest, except the feds or the military which won’t be used.
Most labour jobs do not have this kind of leverage because technology shrank the world and business has negotiated trade deal that give them the freedom to undermine worker leverage. Workers have no leverage to force capitulation. Labour has long lost any control they had to influence business practices and fight for themselves. Labour actions would have to be across the entire company to effectively force capitulation and that is next to impossible because labour ain’t a community anymore thanks to anti-commie fear mongering. Every union is isolated, every location is separated, every company the corporate owns is independent from each other. Labour is too divided to stand united and united is the only way it effectively works. A group can’t fight individual power with individual power, it must fight with collective power and for that, it needs to be united first.
People aren’t opposed to unions because they think unions aren’t powerful, they’re opposed to unions because they’re powerful.
It is the rich and powerful who are opposed, the public is just afraid and brainwashed out of their own power.
That’s not true though. I’ve talked to plenty of working class people who hate unions and hate dealing with union workers due to perceived laziness, bad work ethic, and the inability to fire bad workers.
Also plenty of unions are full of rich and powerful people: pilots unions, doctors unions, actors unions, sports athletes unions.
Unions work depending on how ‘in it together’ you feel.
If you resent the people standing around doing nothing they start to fail. If you resent the people who do worse work than you for the same pay they start to fail. note that on an assembly line the above isn’t possible in the first place - which is why they work great there. (Bus drivers and police are also not really measureable like that)
To me, this is an area where some unions could really make up some ground with conservatives and liberals. The instinct to rally around members can be detrimental to the overall goal of the union when that member has been proven to be a bad employee. I’ve never been in a union, so I’m guessing the stereotype of lazy union workers is probably overblown; but I’m sure there are examples that reinforce it.
one of the biggest tools used in america to break unions is creating a 2-tier workforce (incentivizes one group deciding to work less-hard, which builds resentment) and by purposefully lowering hiring standards. lotta unions in the US really are complacent, seemingly having forgotten that these same capitalists they regularly fail to bargain with have literally attempted to murder them multiple times within living memory.
when all you know is the farm…you don’t realize just how much better it could be, i guess.
I suspect that some of the ‘lazy union worker’ stereotype is workers following their contract and refusing to do non-contracted work, which is, of course, essential to maintaining the value of that contract. Pride in your own work/trade doesn’t mean cleaning up after the other trades; professionalism in your own work doesn’t mean unpaid overtime to fix someone else’s fuckup.
Are you going to argue that police unions are a net good? They are the reason we have impenetrable qualifed immunity for even ridiculously egregious misconduct and any time a cop is shown to actually go over the absurdly strict line of what they can be held legally accountable for, the unions protect them at all costs. The reason criminal cops can just get hired at any other PD and their past is covered up/ignored is the police unions. I’m not saying they don’t do good things, but the bad they do is way too much to overlook.
With the legal authority police have, they need to be held to higher standards than the average person, instead the unions voraciously fight to ensure there are virtually zero standards for police conduct.
There’s very clearly no indication that they are implying police unions are good, they’re implying they are effective. Which is inarguable.
Company unions don’t work.
And if union busting is encouraged by the government, being part of a regular union might not be worth the sacrifice.
Union busting government deserves to fall.
And company unions do as well.
I agree with you
Most people won’t understand the difference or read your link
Especially because “company” unions aren’t a thing in the civilised world
I added the link just seconds ago. Apparently looking up new terms is too difficult.
I have the feeling the voters in this tread have no idea what a company union is. There’s a reason they are banned by international labor law!
For those that haven’t read the link
A company or “yellow” union is a worker organization which is dominated or unduly influenced by an employer and is therefore not an independent trade union. Company unions are contrary to international labour law (see ILO Convention 98, Article 2).1 They were outlawed in the United States by the 1935 National Labor Relations Act §8(a)(2),2 due to their use as agents for interference with independent unions. However, company unions persist in many countries.
A company or “yellow” union is a worker organization which is dominated or unduly influenced by an employer and is therefore not an independent trade union. Company unions are contrary to international labour law (see ILO Convention 98, Article 2).1 They were outlawed in the United States by the 1935 National Labor Relations Act §8(a)(2),2 due to their use as agents for interference with independent unions. However, company unions persist in many countries.
I also didn’t know this:
Japan
Main article: Labor unions in Japan
Company unions are a mainstay of labor organization in Japan, viewed with much less animosity than in Europe or the United States. Unaffiliated with RENGO (the largest Japanese trade union federation), company unions appeal to both the lack of class consciousness in Japanese society and the drive for social status, which is often characterized by loyalty to one’s employer.25
The only issue with Unions is a corporate system that has spent decades on a campaign of misinformation and vilification.
Never forget that its unions that gave you a five day work week, 8 hour days, and child labour laws.
Nothing is given by a corporation out of the kindness of their heart. And nothing makes them more gleeful than listening to people repeat their anti-union screed.
Union doesn’t work because there is so much competition in my country that anybody going out of line will be replaced
This is exactly what unions are meant to prevent, hire and fire.
That’s exactly why a union will work.
I guess if you work at a company where they could replace 100% of the staff without losing money, then yeah, a union wouldn’t work.
When workers unions are in arms, they are very effective too
i dont think police unions count, they are gang/mafia that can browbeat a city to giving what it wants(they can refuse to actual do anything about specific crimes if they so chose), its fully supported by the gop and dnc, because they can use to keep the general population at arms length. it was discussed many times on subs, how they arnt like voted on or have grassroots upbringing.
This can be countered by having non local cops in the mix, having frequent transfers of cops.
Yes these can be seen as union busting.
Unions are good and they work. But just as any good things in excess it becomes poison.
People parroting this are falling for the capitalist propaganda. Unions work so well that the ruling class has employed a mass campaign against unions. That isn’t weakness.
We the working class keep our society running, we can shut our society down, and this scares the shit out of the ruling classes who while wealthy in assets, are weak in number.
Especially the police unions in Massachusetts, where they have a stranglehold on public works. Need to dig up a sidewalk to repair a water main? That’ll require a 2 person police detail for a minimum of 6 hours, and it’s all overtime pay.
Bet you can’t find civilian flagged anywhere in the state.
HMMMM, I wonder why police unions were allowed to exist, but all the others were decimated and neutered?
Wow. That’s insane.
What other unions protect their members from murder charges?
This is true, though police unions typically leverage the “fuck you all” nature of being a union, that Dems won’t touch, and being police, that the GOP won’t touch. So no one stops policies that give wacky amounts of leave.
That should be the attitude of all unions
Honestly, not really. Someone that worked with Chicago PD was telling me that a lot of the more senior officers (this was also 10 years ago) leverage accruing enough leave to cover half the year. So they collect a salary 6 months of the year, and a lot end up getting second jobs because they want more money. These are taxpayer-funded services, so I’d rather not give ample avenues to abuse the system because politicians have no spine.
This breaks the morale but why to sacrifice collective good because a few game the good to get better.
Contracts can be drawn to have consequences for gaming the system.
police unions arent organized against an abusive management though they’re organized against the public they supposedly serve and protect, which they also have the monopoly of violence over.
if you really wanted to reign in police unions…just make em pay all their abuse of force lawsuits out of their pensions. they’d create a national database tracking/banning cereal shitbags real quick
My argument is unions are not the monster they are made out to be. They can be good.
police
they are used to enforce the status quo of both parties.
