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Comment by paws | Hacker News Reader

In all the discussion about qualified immunity, it seems to me police unions don't get discussed enough.

Police unions appear to be a significant reason why police officers are shielded from accountability. They make police disciplinary records private [1], are why officers receive excessive overtime pay [2], sometimes including kickbacks to their municipality/town, issue cringeworthy statements [3], and pour $ millions into elections [4]. The more I learn about them, the more disappointment I have in American policing.

Why does the American public tolerate police unions? Perhaps the better question is, who are the politicians that accept their money?

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/nyregion/nypd-discipline-...

[2] https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Police-overtime-spen...

[3] https://www.nycpba.org/miscellaneous/anti-cop-city-council/

[4] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2022/06/police-unions-spend...

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I somewhat support unions for private corporations (except when membership is obligatory),

but unions for public employment just don't make sense!

For private corporations, there's an obvious balance - if the union strikes too much, the whole company goes under (because all production stops).

But for public jobs (e.g. cops, or notoriously, London tube workers), the union can literally demand anything, and the employees can't be fired, and the employer (the government) can't go bankrupt... it's just the population that suffers.

> but unions for public employment just don't make sense!

Seriously? You think it makes no sense for firemen, teachers, nurses, paramedics and waste collectors to act collectively to protect their pay and working conditions? Do you really think that the only bad employers are private employers?

Yes. I think that if they wanted better pay or working conditions, they should pick and choose private employers.

If they’re employed in public jobs, just their increase job & pension security strongly outweigh most other considerations.

Public jobs have good pensions and job security because of the unions... Even then, teachers don't make much. Come o..

If that were true, all unionised jobs would have good security and pensions.

Teachers are paid starvation wages. Jobs that require bachelor's degrees and often extended education and certification post grad that pays $50k. Once you are in the role you are essentially forced into 60-80 hour work weeks with no OT. Plus you get to dodge bullets...

If you want to know why the quality of education in America has dipped look no further than paying teacher barely above retail workers. No knock on the folks who work retail but there is a drastic difference in level of responsibility both to the individuals in their care and society as a whole.

Oh good. The “they should have picked better jobs“ argument. Hopefully, we all agree that we need public employees for these jobs.

I have no idea why we think that they are less deserving of good conditions and good pay if we can acknowledge we need them to do their jobs.

Job security doesn’t outweigh the need to have a living wage and decent benefits and decent conditions. Neither does a pension that some people won’t even live to enjoy.

Everybody deserves livable wages and good benefits, not just private employees. Everybody. I don’t care if your job is teaching, garbage collector, fry cook, reporter, city collections clerk, any job under the sun that needs to be done, and a human being has to do it, requires a living wage and decent benefits.

This is especially true of public jobs that we need people to do for society to function. We need teachers. We need janitors. We need people in all of these public roles. In fact, in North Carolina it’s a royal pain in the ass to get your drivers license renewed if you actually have to go to the DMV because they don’t have enough staff, because the pay sucks. That affects everybody.

Maybe private employers should have to pay more than public jobs to offset the perceived security of public jobs. But that’s not the same thing as what you were arguing here.

If I understand your argument correctly, you’re saying that the quality of public services would be improved by paying people more, not by giving unions more power?

If so, I agree 100%.

Another viable alternative is to reject socialism (central planning) and embrace markets (e.g. I see no reason why janitors, garbage collectors and even teachers (giving parents actual school choice) couldn’t be employed by private corporations that compete to perform a public service.

Socialism !== central planning. Perhaps you were thinking of communism.

Sure, you can simply privatize everything, and use taxpayers money to line the pockets of private shareholders. Taxpayers don't like that much, so in that kind of system people tend to oppose public services in general. And it involves the government handing out contracts for everything, which inevitably leads to corruption.

I'm saying that people deserve a living wage, etc. If that can happen organically without unions, great. Unions / collective bargaining is a path to achieving good wages and working conditions, because employers (public and otherwise) tend to worsen those things over time without workers having a closer to equal bargaining position.

"Markets" have aggressively sought every way possible to get labor as cheaply as possible. The idea that privatizing public services is going to make things better for anyone other than the shareholders / owners of those companies is not only ridiculous in theory, it's proven to be false in practice.

One only need look at private prisons, private hospitals, private healthcare, and (as I referenced before) the NC DMV for evidence of this. Many of the license plate agencies and such are privately run, and they're worse for it.

If your presumptions were actually true, then why do we see public unions at all?

Because game theory? They know they have nothing to lose while having lots to gain (better pay & benefits).

Which is kind-of the point. Tragedy of the commons. The individuals (union members) gain while the public loses (more strikes, worse service, higher tax-financed salaries)

I don't find game theory to be a convincing explanation. If public workers were forming unions for game theoretic reasons why didn't essential workers form unions during the pandemic. Most of those essential workers were part-time and had no benefits to speak of. If game theory were taking place, then we'd see a lot more grocery store unions.

The police are an arm of the state, and have virtually unlimited power to dispense violence, even in seemingly illegal circumstances. There is no power theoretically greater than state power in the USA; the enforcement arm of the state does not need or deserve a union.

They should, and since they work for a government agency, they do regardless of the union. If they don't like how their department is run, the can work to elect politicians who support their department.

The true issue with public unions is that they can elect their own bosses. There can't be good-faith negotiation if the position of the "boss" is dependent on supporting the union.

I'm not convinced it is the fact that they have a union is critical for their extensive protections, even in the US there are many other classes of jobs that have unions and they do not enjoy anything like the protection the US police does.

The most reasonable explanation for benefits far in excess of what other unions can muster is the fact that they have a privilege simply by being police, which makes sense since they are largely the force used to suppress other challengers to the authority of employers.

In other words, they got these protections because their employers were willing to accept them, safe in the knowledge that they didn't need those avenues to extract accountability, not simply because their union asked for it.

Afaik no labor unions recognize police unions as labor unions. For the simple fact that police unions never join actions in solidarity with labor, but often do against them even to the point of violent strike breaking.

We also need cops to be prosecuted by an independent authority tasked with this. Having the DA do it is a huge conflict of interest, the DA is highly dependent on the local cops.

I'd like to see an end to police officers bouncing from one department to another after they've been fired (or resigned) for misconduct.

Also, I'd like to see cops held liable for settlements, not the tax payer!

Both of these can be achieved by forcing cops to carry liability insurance. The more claims they get, the higher their premiums, and eventually bad cops will be uninsurable - thus unemployment.

> Why does the American public tolerate police unions?

Corporate media shapes public opinion shapes political campaigns. Violent crime is historically low, but the public thinks crime is rampant and rising.

Because real money is on the line. From manufactured outrage (advertising) to the schools-to-prison pipeline to the penal industry.

Witness the Democrats ongoing "tough on crime" measures. Total kabuki. With real world consequences.

Witness the success rate of "progressive" prosecutors. Every one of them chewed up and spit out by The System.

FWIW, my best guess is successful reform will come from urban courts and judges.

My city's and county's benches are very progressive. Stuff like creating separate courts for vets, bringing wrap around social services to the court room, innovations such as restorative justice, a traveling court that brings proceedings to the communities, shepherding student courts, etc, etc.

(Not sure why the downvote, it's a legit question)

I'm of a mind there should be more union protections for everyone, not fewer. The strong protections that police have should be the norm.

As for police reform, I moved from the US to a Nordic country known for professional and committed cops. Mind blowing, how calm and peaceful and unfraught dealing with cops are, here. When I first moved here, it was the police department that handled immigration matters and I nearly had a panic attack. Completely unnecessary fear.

To be a cop here requires 4 years of training, a degree, as well as ongoing psych evals. Everyone including the police are just so freaking reasonable it can be disconcerting!

I'm not sure what is going on in the US that makes the government so extractive. That corruption is the root cause of any police corruption. But more training and exclusivity couldn't hurt.

> The strong protections that police have should be the norm.

I agree the US generally doesn't have great worker protections and the situation should probably be improved.

On the other hand, when the public seeks redress against police misconduct, they have the unions to thank for serious obstacles they must face. Unions historically have succeeded in hiding disciplinary records from the public, apparently help "bad apples" quickly get re-hired the next town over, inflate salaries and are behind very expensive defined benefit pensions. It seems hard to argue that police unions are furthering the public interest. Combined with qualified immunity, which is nonsensical overreaching judicial activism, and the Supreme Court ruling officers have no duty to protect [0], American policing seems to fail its public terribly.

I've noticed certain YouTube channels seem to easily and consistently get endless examples of obvious police misconduct [1][2][3].

Meanwhile I've previously seen people argue that improving the pay [4] may help, but at least in some states when factoring in overtime and weird contractual rules+bonuses, total pay seems to be already very high.

The problems seem to run very deep.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeShaney_v._Winnebago_County

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@AuditTheAudit

[2] https://www.youtube.com/@LongIslandAudit

[3] https://www.youtube.com/@LackLusterMedia

[4]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35235677

Some leftists argue that police are essentially an extension of state power, and so not labor in the traditional sense. To have a Union that protects state power only serves to doubly oppress the people state power is used against. These people then argue that police unions are a corruption of the idea of unions, and should not exist. Laborers should have Union protection, but not the state.

I should say I’m not too well versed in this argument, so this is my vague recollection of its high level points.

Hadn't seen this argument before but it resonates, thanks. If you have any links to share I'd be curious to read more.

Great! I just did a search and came up with a few links. Hope you find them helpful!

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-to-know-police-unions-l...

https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trou...

https://theconversation.com/why-police-unions-are-not-part-o...

UK has a statutory police union -- that is, the government set up its own union for them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_Federation_of_England_a...

Interesting quote from there:

"Police officers hold office and are not employees. Each officer is an independent legal official and not an "agent of the police force, police authority or government". This allows the police their unique status and notionally provides the citizens of the UK a protection from any government that might wish unlawfully to use the police as an instrument against them."

I think police should have the ability to collectively negotiate important things like dangerous on the job conditions or poor scheduling or bad pay. Maybe that's not a union but being a police officer shouldn't doom you to unsafe working conditions that you can't fight back against because individuals have no power against a system like that.

I hope you don't do drugs though because you'll see a completely different side of cops (see what's happening in Norway and Sweden these days)

Expand, please?

There was a time when even union members and liberals agreed that a public sector union was a nonsense concept. I think it was JFK that first permitted them, and since then they've grown to such enormous political power that questioning their existence has become wrongthink.

In theory public sector unions cannot legally strike or engage in work actions but this constraint is ignored whenever they find it inconvenient.

They create a feedback loop between public expenditure and political power which is very bad for liberal democracy.

I agree. On top of the interference by unions, when payouts do happen, it's at the taxpayers expense.

Police should carry insurance against malpractice. When malpractice is carried out, the policeman (or union's) insurance should pay, not the taxpayer.

Let the God, aka invisible hand of capitalism, aka the greed of insurance companies, sort them out.

I don't understand either. Unions for public service jobs seems strange. An extreme example would be the military. Could you imagine if the military had unions?

A member run collective that advocated for pay and conditions?

No need to imagine: https://dfwa.org.au/about/

What's so strange about public sector unions?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_and_Public_Sector_Un...

The problem with the US Police unions is they act to cover up bad behaviour, etc.

> The problem with the US Police unions is they act to cover up bad behaviour, etc.

Police unions kind of invert the typical power dynamic of a union. Normally, a union exists to protect less powerful workers from more powerful bosses. Police unions as they exist today mostly protect more powerful police from less powerful members of the public.

The most problematic ones are for public employees (police, teachers). Richard Hanania makes the case that labor unions in general are immoral, I tend to agree: https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/why-labor-unions-are-e...

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