They need to address this and end it, quickly: In Methuen, where the average resident earns just under $32,000 a year, five police captains stand to each make $432,295 a year under their new contract. As well as this: Records reveal trooper posts that are overtime all the time in which troopers typically earn about $680 per shift. And so much more. Yes, I am sure these are the bad apples and that a majority of public union members are not paid such wages, but still, to the common working class voter who is begging for a $15 minimum wage, it’s impossible to expect them to feel any sympathy at all when they hear that public sector unions are being attacked.
Moving to Massachusetts several years ago, I was amazed at the use of police officers on routine road maintenance projects and even more outraged to discover that a lot of these were on overtime. I came from a state where all construction crews needed were a person at either side, or just one on a small job, to hold a “Stop/Go” sign – typically a college student on summer break.
From a public relations perspective, it looks like the public sector unions are digging their own grave, and posting an overtime police detail to supervise it.
Police unions tend to be very different than the rest of public unions. They don’t, for example, involve themselves with other unions or union activities like promoting a $15 minimum wage. Another complicating factor is civil service exams, which qualify people for jobs, that they may not otherwise be qualified for. Another issue is politics. The Springfield Police Department has a laughably huge number of members accused of various crimes. The mayor loves them.
Police also tend toward the conservative end of the political spectrum. The Springfield Police Department once picketed the Democratic Convention in Springfield. They had cops from out of state holding signs. It was a dirty trick by Andy Card’s brother-in-law.
As a selectman, I negotiated a couple of police contracts. Granby is a small town. Our police could probably make more in a larger department, but they are pretty reasonable. Our chief only makes plus or minus $100,000.
If you are alluding to the convention incident I think you are Dems fell for it hook, line, and sinker. It was before I was involved, but my understanding is that the picket was informational only, but many convention-goes reflexively refused to cross a picket line, which was not a necessary or appropriate response in this case.
Christopher, I doubt you know what I’m talking about. I don’t think you were even born. I wasn’t politically active myself. I”m pretty sure it was in the 1980s. This was no joke. Police were hassling people for going in. They were acting thuggish. It was not informational.
I thought it was more like 1990, but that part isn’t important. I was going by what I have heard from those who were there. For the record, I was born in 1978.
1990 sounds about right. My dad was there. It was not informational. They were asked not to cross the picket line. The police union president was a GOP operative.
Happy 40th birthday!
Thanks, still trying to decide how enthusiastic I want to be about that part;) Personally, I think the delegates should have crossed the picket line if it were known that this was a dirty trick. Plus it’s not as if the convention center were the culprit in the union dispute and crossing the line would mean patronizing a bad employer.
Eventually, they crossed the picket line, but it took a while to figure out if they were legitimate picketers. The cop that confronted my dad also told him that he was from Rhode Island. The big issue was a delay.
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1990/06/13/Democrats-charge-Republican-aides-in-convention-picketing/5590645249600/
(I just turned 54)
You have this exactly backwards.
Police unions are strong unions. If other unions were as strong as police unions a lot of the problems that you say you despair of would evaporate. Gone. No trace left at all. If public unions want to survive they –and we– should be striving mightily to make them all as strong as police unions.
Instead — according to you — we should, for the good of all unions, make the police union as weak as all other unions. Yah right… sorry, but no sale.
Police unions are strong unions? It looks more like corrupt to me an my fellow working class pals. When a small town police officer makes more than the president of the USA in town where most people make $30K but are taxed to pay that officer’s wages.., that’s not strong, that’s corruption.
Methuen has a screw loose somewhere. As far as I can tell, these captains are making more than 3 times the average police captain. That’s insane. That’s not a union issue. That’s something really screwed up somewhere.
Springfield isn’t the cleanest city nor does it have the cleanest police department. Here’s the City of Springfield’s Open Checkbook. There are 12 police captains. Their base salary is $104,000. The most one made was $188,000. From where I sit, that’s a hell of a lot, but I don’t know what else he was doing. Most are making less. I checked Chicopee too. Their captains are pulling down $150,000 at most, Base salary again about $100,000.
Blaming unions for Methuen is grossly unfair to unions.
“more like corrupt” ??
For where is it, you think, from which corruption stems?
It is from strength.
Strong unions always have the possibility of being corrupt. That’s one of the… ahem… weaknesses… of strength. Corruption stems from the power to make a choice. That’s why the legislature can be corrupt and, in fact, anybody who has power can be corrupt. That’s the point, if any, to the very idea of power. Police unions, in Methuen and elsewhere are corrupt because they have abused their strength.
If they had no strength, they could not abuse it and, therefore, could not be corrupt… neither would they have the choice, or the chance, to be righteous.
You would, instead, deny them the choice, forgoing the possibility of corruption. Ok. But, in doing so, you would also forgo the possibility of make a choice for the good… turning public unions into just another cog in the status quo.
Good luck with that….
I think perhaps the question is if the Democratic Party can survive. Trump is an outlier of the GOP, yet he won. Bernie, likewise, is an outlier of the Democrats, and he almost won. What has traditionally been the “moderate” GOP-Democrat mainstream is imploding because of an inability to accomplish a stable and fair society.
We now have multiple versions of Jim Crow, and separate but equal. For example, an elementary teacher who makes 60K is buying her own supplies and gets a pension, is working alongside a para getting low wages and no benefits, while the superintendent can be pulling in more than the governor, and the same is true in all the other departs of local government. There is no attempt at income equality or parity within the government, and even less of an impulse to regulate the same outside of government. A business owner can buy season tickets to the Patriots and claim it is a business expense, whereas the guy working a minimum wage can’t get a raise or health coverage, and a waitress is expected to miraculously live on $2.75 an hour. Everyone only cares about shaping the government for their narrow self-interest, and then try to wrap it in the glory of liberty and freedom and how this dysfunctional meritocracy is best for everyone and the best of all possible worlds, neither of which is anywhere close to true.
While government is the most common lightning rod, that is only because of the transparency in pay. We know in the private sector things are significantly worse, even among the overpaid elite in Hollywood and sports, but definitely in age, race, religion and gender differences. Inequality has become as banal as forcing people to wear gold stars or separating families and putting them in box cars. Some undoubtedly would like to accomplish the same for those who meet their standards of thoughtcrime. Not only do we have hard problems to solve, but we have also lost the ability to communicate in the process of their festering. Holding rallies and protests is straight out of 1984 where everyone who thinks the same gathers to love their own reflection and hate whoever they defined as the enemy. Neither democracy nor the democratic party will be able to survive through such madness, because the laws of mathematics don’t give a damn about popular opinion. We all must reap what we sow. If we sow inequality, then we will reap discord.
Until the democratic party is willing to think and act boldly to solve problems, rather than pandering to the public employee myopia and a fictional New Deal system that failed ages ago, then they will continue to lose power to the GOP. Sure, Massachusetts may be the most insulated state as far as deep partisanship divides go, but all the Trump stickers on pickup trucks shows that the wave is coming, just as surely as the gangs that were once only in California. Our society is collapsing and the captain pay in Methuen is just an incremental notch in a much wider system in crisis.
A lot to disagree with here…
“the question is if the Democratic Party can survive.”
The Democratic Party will survive. The question is, in what form? If Bernie had been elected, the Democratic Party would have changed. It’s changing now anyway.
the “moderate” GOP-Democrat mainstream is imploding because of an inability to accomplish a stable and fair society. Moderation are only possible with compromise. We’ve entered a time when the GOP will NOT COMPROMISE with the Democrats. It’s taken a while for establishment Democrats (and Republicans, to be honest) to realize that the new normal means one party will burn down the country and the world and compromise means give up all our enduring principles for nothing in return.
multiple versions of Jim Crow, and separate but equal We have separate and unequal levels of pay, education, and responsibility. One reason a paraprofessional makes less money is s/he needs a high school diploma in most places, doesn’t take work home, and isn’t responsible for instruction. A teacher, on the other hand, has a master’s degree, takes home work, and has a greater responsibility for students and what happens in the classroom. A superintendent has to spend at least $10,000 to get certified for that level of administration and assumes responsibility for a budget in the tens of millions of dollar. Another factor in educational pay is supply-and-demand: the pool of qualified superintendents is small (one reason so many of them suck).
From a union standpoint, paraprofessionals in many, if not all, schools are union members and represented by in the MTA, and I assume, the AFT, both of which worked hard to get signatures for the Fair Share Amendment, family leave, and $15 minimum wage, even though none of those directly affected teachers.
Until the democratic party is willing to think and act boldly to solve problems, rather than pandering to the public employee myopia and a fictional New Deal system that failed ages ago, then they will continue to lose power to the GOP. Everyone seems to disagree with me, but it is a categorical fallacy to attribute human qualities to the Democratic Party. can’t “think” or “act boldly.” A political party is a voluntary organization of people. As Bernie showed, the workings of the party can be affected and changed by someone who isn’t even a Democrat.
And the captain’s pay in Methuen? That’s not a systemic crisis. It’s a local problem.