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If a police union demands too much, they don't threaten their employer with going out of business the way private sector unions do. The private sector union is

by geofft 6y ago

If a police union demands too much, they don't threaten their employer with going out of business the way private sector unions do. The private sector union is naturally constrained to saying, "We want to help you build a reliable business for the long term; treat us fairly and we will do good work." Sometimes, of course, they do better at this than other times, but it is never in a union's interest to impair the business to the point where the jobs no longer exist. There is no such pressure on the police union. No demand for higher pay will cause their employer to shut down - it will at most go deeper into debt. No demand to put up with worse work (be it worse quality or simply more illegal) will cause the market to find a different supplier - there is no market. No overreach by the old guard will risk losing newer folks to an un-unionized competitor - there are no competitors. And so forth. So I don't think this is even hypocrisy - effective police union leaders have very different approaches from effective private sector union leaders.

smabie 6y ago
Aren't police unions similar to other government unions, like teachers unions then?
- geofft 6y ago
  Yes, I think this argument applies to public sector unions as a whole. I think empirically, teachers' unions (and the postal worker's union, and so forth) have not been so, well, inclined to defend illegal and unconstitutional activity as police unions, so I'm not going to advocate as urgently for getting rid of them, but definitely they're also not quite like private sector unions for similar reasons. (That said, both public schools and the post office have meaningful private-sector competitors, in the sense that the government can decide that they just don't need to fund so many teachers or postal workers anymore, and systems like vouchers for private schools make it look even more like a private-sector market.)
- crooked-v 6y ago
  I think the major distinction there is that no other union is composed of members who hold the legal monopoly on violence.
briandear 6y ago
> but it is never in a union's interest to impair the business to the point where the jobs no longer exist. Yet, that’s what they do. The Packard car company is one such victim. Unions bankrupted Twinkies. The work rules imposed in union contracts required the company that makes Twinkies, which also makes Wonder Bread, to deliver these two products to stores in separate trucks. Moreover, truck drivers were not allowed to load either of these products into their trucks. And the people who did load Twinkies into trucks were not allowed to load Wonder Bread, and vice versa. All of this was obviously intended to create more jobs for the unions' members. But the needless additional costs that these make-work rules created ended up driving the company into bankruptcy. The labor leader John L. Lewis called so many strikes in the coal mines that many people switched to using oil instead, because they couldn't depend on coal deliveries. A professor of labor economics at the University of Chicago called John L. Lewis "the world's greatest oil salesman." The higher costs of producing coal not only led many consumers to switch to oil. They also led coal companies to substitute machinery for labor, reducing the number of miners. There is also a reason why labor unions are flourishing among people who work for government. No matter how much these public-sector unions drive up costs, government agencies do not go out of business. They simply go back to the taxpayers for more money.
- rbg246 6y ago
  Unions bring far more good to society than bad to society. They have given the non-landed class of people a life that even a century ago was unheard of. Countries that have decent levels of union involvement have much better working conditions and standard of living than countries that don't. Blaming unions for failed companies is incredibly flimsy argument against unions as a whole. Sure there are unions that contributed to the collapse of some companies, people make mistakes. Bad management is a far more leading cause of business collapse than unions.
  - briandear 6y ago
    The OP said it was never in a union’s interest to harm a company. And I provided counter arguments where they did exactly that. Unions reward mediocrity and the self interest of the union leaders at the expense of society as a whole. You pay a union worker more, that means that everyone else pays for it through higher prices. They also diminish the agency of the individual. Everyone is average. The US has a union membership of 13% and France is 9%. Does France have a higher quality of life? Many would say so. Does the US have a higher quality of life than Italy? By economic measures, definitely. Switzerland has a much lower union membership than Belgium and a much higher quality of life. What country has the highest disposable income? The US, followed by Canada, then Switzerland. And unemployment rate? Before corona skewed everything, the US unemployment rate was below 4%. In Sweden? Close to 7%. We get mad at businesses for monopolies, yet a union is a monopoly on labor. How is that right? The irony is that many people reading this are Silicon Valley software people making piles more money with far more disposable income than anyone working in a unionized country. If Silicon Valley were unionized, pay and benefits would decline dramatically. And productivity and innovation would decline. What’s the motivation to work hard if your pay is determined by collective bargaining and not your own merits? Unions are the sanctuary of the mediocre.

by geofft 6y ago

smabie 6y ago

Aren't police unions similar to other government unions, like teachers unions then?

geofft 6y ago
Yes, I think this argument applies to public sector unions as a whole. I think empirically, teachers' unions (and the postal worker's union, and so forth) have not been so, well, inclined to defend illegal and unconstitutional activity as police unions, so I'm not going to advocate as urgently for getting rid of them, but definitely they're also not quite like private sector unions for similar reasons. (That said, both public schools and the post office have meaningful private-sector competitors, in the sense that the government can decide that they just don't need to fund so many teachers or postal workers anymore, and systems like vouchers for private schools make it look even more like a private-sector market.)
crooked-v 6y ago
I think the major distinction there is that no other union is composed of members who hold the legal monopoly on violence.

briandear 6y ago

> but it is never in a union's interest to impair the business to the point where the jobs no longer exist. Yet, that’s what they do. The Packard car company is one such victim. Unions bankrupted Twinkies. The work rules imposed in union contracts required the company that makes Twinkies, which also makes Wonder Bread, to deliver these two products to stores in separate trucks. Moreover, truck drivers were not allowed to load either of these products into their trucks. And the people who did load Twinkies into trucks were not allowed to load Wonder Bread, and vice versa. All of this was obviously intended to create more jobs for the unions' members. But the needless additional costs that these make-work rules created ended up driving the company into bankruptcy. The labor leader John L. Lewis called so many strikes in the coal mines that many people switched to using oil instead, because they couldn't depend on coal deliveries. A professor of labor economics at the University of Chicago called John L. Lewis "the world's greatest oil salesman." The higher costs of producing coal not only led many consumers to switch to oil. They also led coal companies to substitute machinery for labor, reducing the number of miners. There is also a reason why labor unions are flourishing among people who work for government. No matter how much these public-sector unions drive up costs, government agencies do not go out of business. They simply go back to the taxpayers for more money.

rbg246 6y ago
Unions bring far more good to society than bad to society. They have given the non-landed class of people a life that even a century ago was unheard of. Countries that have decent levels of union involvement have much better working conditions and standard of living than countries that don't. Blaming unions for failed companies is incredibly flimsy argument against unions as a whole. Sure there are unions that contributed to the collapse of some companies, people make mistakes. Bad management is a far more leading cause of business collapse than unions.
- briandear 6y ago
  The OP said it was never in a union’s interest to harm a company. And I provided counter arguments where they did exactly that. Unions reward mediocrity and the self interest of the union leaders at the expense of society as a whole. You pay a union worker more, that means that everyone else pays for it through higher prices. They also diminish the agency of the individual. Everyone is average. The US has a union membership of 13% and France is 9%. Does France have a higher quality of life? Many would say so. Does the US have a higher quality of life than Italy? By economic measures, definitely. Switzerland has a much lower union membership than Belgium and a much higher quality of life. What country has the highest disposable income? The US, followed by Canada, then Switzerland. And unemployment rate? Before corona skewed everything, the US unemployment rate was below 4%. In Sweden? Close to 7%. We get mad at businesses for monopolies, yet a union is a monopoly on labor. How is that right? The irony is that many people reading this are Silicon Valley software people making piles more money with far more disposable income than anyone working in a unionized country. If Silicon Valley were unionized, pay and benefits would decline dramatically. And productivity and innovation would decline. What’s the motivation to work hard if your pay is determined by collective bargaining and not your own merits? Unions are the sanctuary of the mediocre.