Pat Lynch isn’t a cartoon character, although he does his best to come off that way. As police unions, separate from all other public sector unions, have come under attack as being singularly problematic when it comes to excising the cancer of bad individual cops from the force, Lynch does his best Wile E. Coyote routine by throwing teachers unions, inter alia, under the bus.
For example, a common anti-union talking point is that “police unions have traditionally used their bargaining agreements to create obstacles to disciplining officers.” In New York State, at least, that’s false. Police unions are prohibited from negotiating disciplinary issues. The police commissioner — and, by extension, the mayor who appointed him — have full authority over discipline.
But then there’s mandatory arbitration, Pat. They discipline. You arbitrate. Did that slip your mind?
It’s also a myth that police unions blindly defend every police officer accused of a crime. Our union has said — repeatedly, unequivocally and with the unanimous support of the police officers we represent — that George Floyd was murdered and the police officer who murdered him should be behind bars.
Chauvin wasn’t one of yours, Pat. Pantaleo, on the other hand? But Pat’s got more myths to bust.
The state lobbying watchdogs’ most recent annual report, for example, shows the city’s United Federation of Teachers, the New York State Nurses Association and New York State United Teachers unions among the state’s top lobbying spenders, with payouts ranging from $1.3 million to $1.6 million. That same year, the PBA spent just over $200,000 on lobbying — the vast majority of it in our fight to obtain the same pension benefits as every other police officer and firefighter in New York State.
That’s a lot of money not going into teachers’ pockets, What was Randi thinking?
But when members are accused of misconduct or a crime in the performance of their duties, we must work within laws that require all unions to provide fair representation to all members, even and especially in difficult, tragic cases. Once again, police unions are not the outlier here: The teachers union provides representation for members “facing criminal charges as a result of disciplinary actions taken against a pupil while the member was doing his or her job.” The transit workers union defends members who are charged in fatal on-duty accidents, and even waged a PR campaign against a proposed change to the right-of-way laws that would have unfairly criminalized bus drivers who were attempting to do their job.
And in the most cop of cop ways, Pat Lynch burns solidarity to the ground for his cops.
Private sector unionism exists under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, better known as the Wagner Act, named after its author, New York Senator Robert F. Wagner, which was designed to address the bargaining asymmetry between employers and employees. It made sense, as it balanced the right to strike against lockouts, the former costing the employer profits and the latter costing the employees wages.
But the New York law permitting public sector unionism, the Public Employees Fair Employment Act, is amusingly called the Taylor Law. named after a professor at Wharton, George Taylor, because no New York politician wanted his name associated with the law. While the concept made some sense if one squinted really hard and only saw the piece relating to the rights of workers, it made no sense otherwise.
Pubic employees can’t strike (although they do, only to be forgiven their trespasses as part of the resolution of their unlawful strike). Public employers can’t lock them out without eliminating the services they exist to perform. There’s no profit to be lost, and the gain from savings in salaries inured to the benefit of the public as public employees are paid by taxes.
As far as their wielding influence as to their wages and terms and condition of employment, they do. They get to speak out and persuade the public as to the merit of their needs. They get to vote, like every other citizen. They get to form associations, put in their dimes and buy off politicians like anyone else, even if their associations had no lawful ability to bargain collectively.
And Pat drives the point home by pointing at his fellow public sector unionists who are even worse than he is. Way to go, Pat. But cops are different, as even Pat can’t (and wouldn’t) deny.
Many in the police reform movement would say, with reason, that the difference comes from police officers’ unique role in our society. That difference is an undeniable fact: as police officers, we have a different job than bus drivers or nurses or teachers, with different responsibilities and powers.
But those differences are confined to the job we do, not the rights we are guaranteed as employees or citizens.
And cops do, “undeniably,” have a unique role in our society, which is why their “rights” as employees give rise to the problem. Their “right” to a job even after they’ve wrongfully killed somebody is unique. Their “right” to a pension despite using the job to commit crimes like stealing money off dead bodies or crime scenes, or just ordinary folks driving along, is unique. Perhaps realizing this, Pat again throws his fellow unionists under the bus.
In the disciplinary realm, too, our only demand has been for the due process rights afforded to other civil servants. Another example: During the fight over repeal of Civil Rights Law Section 50-a, the law that protected police officers’ personnel records, none of the repeal proponents made mention of Education Law 3020-a, which expunges unsubstantiated accusations of misconduct from teachers’ records. Now 50-a is gone and 3020-a and analogous provisions remain, and police officers are left with fewer rights than other city employees.
He’s got a point, as teachers get to spend the waning years of their career in the Rubber Room after touching kids, but being reinstated by arbitrators. Why isn’t anybody demanding an end to that as well?
At this moment, public sector union solidarity is critical. Distrust in government and its agents is at an all-time high. A three-month public health lockdown has only made it worse. Police officers, as one of the most visible faces of government, are now bearing the brunt of a popular backlash that has been brewing for some time.
Pat nails it. We’re focused on cops at the moment because they are visible, the killing of George Floyd lit the cabin-fever match and police unions have been raised as one of the primary stumbling blocks to getting killers off the job. And they are, but the problem isn’t just police unions, as Pat Lynch persuasively argues.
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