Please pass legislation to outlaw police unions in the state of New York. Police departments have their roots in slave catching and busting the labor union protests in the early 20th century. They were militarized in order to disrupt civil rights and anti-war protests in the 1970s onward. Their purpose is to disrupt collective action and make it harder for unions and workers to bargain for their rights, as well as to make it more difficult to assemble peacefully under the 1st amendment.
Congress has federally banned military collective bargaining. Since police departments operate as security forces in the domestic context, they should also be banned from collective bargaining. The federal National Labor Relations Act recognizes a similar carve out where guards, as private security forces, cannot unionize with other workers as it would pose a conflict of interest. At every level of government, we need to recognize that permitting police to unionize creates an insurgent paramilitary organization which threatens public safety more than it enhances it. This conflict of interest does not apply to other public unions, which have a productive purpose which extends beyond acting as security forces. Legislation proposing to outlaw other public union efforts must be opposed.
Because of the nature of police security forces, and the historic recognition that security forces are categorically different from labor, legislation like this is required to disempower police efforts to prevent them from being held accountable. For more on how police unions stifle accountability, please read this NYTimes article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/us/police-unions-minneapolis-kroll.html?smid=fb-share
