Here’s an Idea: Let’s Get Rid of Police Unions

This is an idea I’ve had for a long time, one that popped up again with the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.  Other people have written about this in more detail recently (among others, see here), but it’s not just those who could be written off as anti-union right wingers anymore.  The Financial Times had a front-page story on the problem of police unions yesterday.¹

Among the purposes of unions are to protect the jobs of their members and to get them as much money as possible.  Part of the former is to make it hard to fire union members.  Which in the case of police unions means making it hard to fire police officers.  I’m all for police officers not being fired unfairly, but the way it seems to be working in too many cases these days, is that it is just too hard to fire police officers at all.  There are police officers that need to be fired, and police unions are making it too hard to do so. 

In September of 2017, I wrote a post entitled “Who Gets to Decides [sic] the Chicago Police Department’s ‘Use of Force’ Policy.”  According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, the union representing police officers in Chicago had filed a complaint with the Illinois Labor Relations Board complaining the Chicago Police Department had violated its contract with the union by changing its policy on when police officers could use force without negotiating the question with the union.  I don’t know what happened with the complaint, and as I said in the post, it was just a complaint.  It wasn’t a determination that the City had to get the union’s agreement to change its policy. 

I won’t repeat what I said in that post, other than to say that the arguments I made there fit today’s situation pretty well.  And show what is wrong with unions for police officers.  Police officers, like all public employees, should have proper civil service protection.  They shouldn’t be fired improperly, but the ones who violate rules and/or do bad things need to be fired.  And maybe, if what is done is bad enough, there isn’t a second chance – and even less likely a third or fourth chance.

Unions are necessary and proper in lots of places.  Police departments are not one of them.
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¹ Claire Bushey, “Union leaders blamed for hindering police oversight in Minneapolis,” Financial Times, June 5, 2020.