Talk:Police unions in the United States

Police representation in other major unions

Communications Workers of America

According to CWA in 1997 they had 40k police/prison officers https://cwa-union.org/news/entry/private_prisons_public_nightmare and more recently in 2020, claimed to have ~5,000 police/law enforcement officers. A number of these happened through automatic representation of all public employees in states like West Virginia.

American Federation of Teachers

AFT represents a New Hampshire police keene association https://www.aft.org/affiliate/06246-0 ~ Shushugah (talk) 00:23, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

International Longshore and Warehouse Union

The Los_Angeles Port Police Association is part of ILWU local 65 ~ Shushugah (talk) 00:30, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Contradictory claims

1. Both the Detectives'_Endowment_Association and Sergeants_Benevolent_Association claim to be second largest unions. It appears the first includes retired officers in their count, while second only includes active.

2. The Portland Police Association claims to be oldest police union, but Detectives'_Endowment_Association was founded in 1917. We need better authoritative sources ~ Shushugah (talk) 14:31, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

read more closely & you'll find the Portland Police Association claims to be the oldest continuously operated police union. --Lockley (talk) 17:12, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

And when was DEA or other police unionsnot continuously ran? I believe you, but missed this somewhere ~ Shushugah (talk) 23:31, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Shushugah: -- let me answer you, and if you don't mind, address other interested editors here at the same time. All to the tune of, yes, absolutely, watch out here for reliable sources. That appears to be a particular challenge here.

Your two apparent contradictions above can both be untangled (I think). For the first one, the NYPD has five unions, organized by rank. The DEA claims 20K members on Twitter and the Daily News in 2014 thought they had 5,200 active and 12,000 retired members. (Somewhere around 17K to 20K, close enough.) The SBA is reported as the "second-largest cop union" in NYC claiming 13,000 active and retired sergeants on its Twitter feed. So the DEA is "2nd largest union of NYPD members" and the SBA is "2nd largest union of NYPD cops". I'll make this more explicit in the article.

For the second one, newspapers of the time back up the Portland Police Association's own statement that they're the oldest continuously operated police union in the U.S. Many other unions claim older starting dates. Actually the DEA and SBA are both like that, 1917 and 1899 respectively. For our purposes "union" means a collective bargaining agent with the power to contract negotiate with an employer. The DEA, for instance, only became a union by that definition in 1963 after a change in New York state law.

Ok, so, what was the DEA before it was a "union"? That leads to a larger issue. Just like we're have example of police-strikes-that-weren't-called-strikes, we've had police-unions-that-weren't-called-unions. Looks like there's a considerable history of social clubs, fraternal organizations, mutual aid societies, professional organizations, advocacy groups, (on and on), which served to support the police in various ways, including labor issues, their status as employees, and what you could call bargaining power. I'd expect we'd find a similar history in firefighters. From 1919 to about 1960 the police as a labor force was prevented from formally organizing, so they went as far as they could.

All this is reason for us to consider sources carefully. Another reason: doesn't look like there's any required public reporting of police union membership or leadership, so we're mostly left with the statements of the unions themselves. Some of those are plainly not reliable or (as explained above) not clear. hope this helps, & all best --Lockley (talk) 17:30, 6 July 2020 (UTC)