Labor Pool: Strength In Badges
Worcester police jump ship to upstart union, but at what cost?
It's easy to see the recent Worcester police officers' vote to switch unions as a sort of sales victory, with the upstart, Lowell-based New England Police Benevolent Association convincing rank-and-file cops that it has more to offer than the entrenched International Brotherhood of Police Officers.
That's the way many people, including many union members, frame discussions of inter-union conflicts, but it's not necessarily the best way to understand what makes a union good or bad for the people it represents.
Not that the NEPBA story isn't a compelling one. Since several leaders of the Quincy-based IBPO broke off and formed the union in 2005, NEPBA has won over about 2,500 officers, many of them disgruntled IBPO members, according to Jerry Flynn, executive director of the upstart NEPBA.
In the Worcester election, held Dec. 6, NEPBA blew IBPO away by a 252-19 vote.
Boys In Blue
Flynn cites a number of complaints about IBPO that he says were the driving force behind NEPBA's victories. He says many members aren't thrilled with the $200,000-plus salaries of top IBPO officials, the fact that many of those officials were never cops themselves, or the fact that the union increasingly represents all kinds of government workers, not just those with badges.
Plus, Flynn said, some members want to walk into Beacon Hill offices on lobby days and get the kind of instant recognition that comes with affiliation with the AFL-CIO. NEPBA is part of the International Union of Police Associations, an AFL-CIO union. IBPO is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union, which broke from the established union umbrella two years ago to form the Change to Win federation.
Discussions on Internet message boards frequented by cops locally and across the state suggest that many simply don't see IBPO as offering enough help negotiating contracts to justify what members pay in dues.
Some of these complaints may be valid. Certainly, it hurts union leaders' credibility when they make far more money than the people they represent, and it may be hard for someone who's never driven a cruiser to fully appreciate the concerns of those who do. But looking at a union as a product to be purchased does nothing to help workers in the long run.
Sometimes unions do a bad job of representing their members simply because they have lazy, incompetent or corrupt leaders. But often the reason is that they just aren't strong enough. And the way unions gain strength is by organizing. When more workers in an industry become union members, they put more pressure on their bosses to offer better pay, benefits and working conditions. When more workers in a society become union members, they push public opinion, and politicians, in a worker-friendly direction.
A Losing Battle
The Worcester police officers recognize the importance of strength in numbers when they want the weight of the AFL-CIO behind them in state legislators' offices. But with the unionized percentage of the U.S. labor force at 12 percent and dropping steadily, that weight is less and less each year.
If union members want to build their strength, they may sometimes have to open their unions to people in a different industry who need representation, something that Joe Carlson, president of the Central Massachusetts AFL-CIO, said is now more the rule than the exception. And they may have to pay extra dues that go not toward lawyer fees but toward organizing workers who have never had a union (something SEIU and Change to Win demand more of from affiliates than most unions do).
Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with what NEPBA is doing. By many accounts it is filling a void - providing representation for officers who hadn't been getting the support they needed. (And I'm inclined to think some complaints about IBPO might be justified since union officials didn't return my calls, and I think talking to reporters is one of the unpleasant burdens that union officials ought to shoulder.) But if the union and its members want to do well in the long term, they should make sure they're making decisions based on more than a sales pitch about what the union can do for them.
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