Rising Wages: Workers Don’t Need a Union to Strike for Higher Pay

 The current federal minimum wage has held steady at $7.25 since 2009.  Many states and localities have higher values, and a national effort has been aimed at raising the minimum to $15.  That push has been controversial because $15 might be fine for expensive urban areas, but it is far above prevailing wages in many parts of the country.  Given the political environment, it can be assumed that bipartisan support will not be coming.  An article by Michael Sasso in Bloomberg Businessweek suggests legislation might not be necessary: Tight U.S. Labor Market Makes $15 an Hour De Facto Minimum Wage.

“An analysis of jobs posted from spring 2019 to spring 2021 from a sampling of cities shows many service-sector industries crossed above a $15 starting wage during the period, often by significant margins, according to Emsi Burning Glass, an analytics firm that tracks job postings to glean labor market insights. The trend seems to have gathered steam in the recovery from the Covid recession, with several large employers, including Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and Chipotle Mexican Grill, bumping up starting or average hourly pay to $15 or more. Amazon.com Inc. recently announced it was boosting average starting wages for open logistics jobs to $18 an hour.”

The service sector was hit hard by the Covid pandemic.  It consisted mainly of relatively low-wage work dealing with the public.  From the employers’ perspective, many workers had to be let go because business had dropped considerably.  From the employees’ perspective, it was low-wage activity that had become risky.  For whatever reason, when businesses tried to reopen and get back to pre-pandemic levels, many workers were not waiting in line to get their old jobs back.  Economic pundits seem to be offering the explanation that fear of the virus is causing workers to hesitate.  Another possibility is that people were sick and tired of performing crappy jobs for crappy wages when those jobs have also become dangerous.  Perhaps time will provide the answer, but meanwhile we are seeing a fascinating experiment in our labor market: workers, acting independently, are waiting for wages to rise, and they are getting their way.

“The tight labor market has empowered workers to demand higher pay and improved conditions. The number of job vacancies exceeded new hires by 4.3 million in July, the most in data going back to 2000. Meanwhile, workers’ average hourly earnings climbed 0.6% in August, twice as much as forecast.”

Sasso provides some examples of what the demand for labor is doing to wages.

“Fifty miles northeast of Atlanta, John Culpepper keeps boosting the average wage at his Braselton, Ga., staffing agency, which caters to the area’s big crop of distribution centers and manufacturers. It was $13.39 in the summer of 2020 and has since climbed 25%, to $16.80. Chalk it up in part to aggressive recruiting tactics by employers in the area. For instance, deep-discount retailer Ollie’s Bargain Outlet has taken to emailing its customers and offering $1,000 bonuses and jobs paying up to $20 an hour for warehouse work in nearby Commerce.”

“Two years ago the lowest wage advertised in job postings for cooks in Phoenix averaged $10.71 an hour, but that jumped 80%, to $19.24, two years later. In Philadelphia 88% of employers that offered less than $15 two years ago for laborers and material handlers had moved above that figure by 2021.”

“Then there’s Chicago, where an ordinance took effect in July requiring employers with 21 or more employees to pay at least $15 an hour. The wage gains in some low-paying industries in the city have outstripped the new minimum, says Emsi Burning Glass chief economist Bledi Taska. For example, half of Chicago employers that offered less than $15 for personal-care aides two years ago were above that figure by spring 2021, with the average low wage in job postings climbing from $13.28 an hour to $17.78.”

These results are remarkable.  They beg the question as to whether the gains will persist or return back to the pre-pandemic situation.  We do have history to provide us with some perspective.

Walter Scheidel has produced the book, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century.  Scheidel tells us that history suggests that as soon as it was possible to acquire more sustenance than was necessary for daily needs, the unequal accumulation of that surplus would begin.  Further, the larger the surplus, the greater the degree of inequality.  That should surprise no one.  The disturbing part is his conclusion that only massive levels of violence and widespread death were capable of leveling that inequality significantly.  Peace and stability only served to increase inequality.  Once the catastrophe had passed, inequality would grow back.

We are currently experiencing change induced by a pandemic.  The worst pandemic in recorded history, the Black Plague, provides an example to consider.  The plague seems to have originated in the Gobi Desert around 1320 and gradually spread over much of the world.  It would come and do its damage then subside only to return again in cycles that persisted over several generations.  The extent of population loss was remarkable.

“By 1350 the plague had run its course in the Mediterranean, and by the following year it had abated all over Europe—if only for the time being.  Little would be gained by recounting the casualty numbers proffered by medieval witnesses who struggled to measure the immeasurable and often fell back on rounded or stereotypical figures.  Even so, the 23,840,000 plague deaths calculated for Pope Clement VI in 1351 need not be wide of the mark.  Modern estimates of overall losses range from 25 percent to 45 percent.  According to the latest reconstruction by Paolo Malanima, Europe’s population fell from 94 million in 1300 to 68 million in 1400, a drop of more than a quarter.  Attrition was most severe in England and Wales which may have lost almost half of their preplague population of close to 6 million and which did not reach preplague levels until the early eighteenth century, and in Italy where at least a third of the people perished.”

Such a huge loss of life would tilt labor markets in favor of workers.  Scheidel provides this anecdote to illustrate the degree of change that occurred.

“According to the Chronicle of the Priory of Rochester attributed to William Dene…’such a shortage of laborers ensued that the humble turned up their noses at employment and could scarcely be persuaded to serve the eminent for triple wages’.”

But what would ultimately be the fate of this beneficial labor market?

“The linkage between demographic change and real incomes is striking: in all the cities under review, real wages peaked a little after population numbers had reached their low point.  Demographic recovery reversed wage growth, and in many places, real wages continued to decline after 1600 as population kept expanding.” 

The lesson from Scheidel’s study is that boosted wages were temporary and would eventually fall for two reasons.  First, employers would use their wealth and power to drive wages back down using public policy when possible; second, population was growing fast enough to provide workers in numbers that allowed employers to keep wages low. 

How does this relate to our current situation?  We have yet to see a response by employer-friendly politicians to this wage escalation, but one should expect there to be one.  For the wage gains to be maintained over time, a demographic change will have to occur.  Somehow, the number of applicants for these low-wage jobs must remain low. 

Could there be some kind of demographic change taking place?  We should note that the US and nearly all wealthy countries are experiencing birth deficits.  Young adults are not producing enough babies to replace themselves.  Net population in some countries is already falling, with more to follow.  The US population is only growing because of immigration.  We tend to think of immigrants as people desperate for a job who will keep wages low.  However, official policy is to encourage immigration by skilled, well-educated people and discourage the types who have traditionally crossed our borders illegally.  We pay little attention to the number of immigrants in the former category, but it is significant.  If the demographics of our immigrants are changing, then the nature of our low-wage workforce will also change.  The people coming to our southern border now are no longer strictly economic refugees.  Many are fleeing political and climate threats.  They are not necessarily the people we expect them to be.

It would not be a disaster if the price of a hamburger increased.  Let starting wages climb and push all wages higher.  Perhaps we are seeing the beginning of a long-term trend that no one predicted.  Realistically though, as history tells us, we should freeze in those higher wages with a healthy federal minimum wage.

 

Covid Vaccination: In the US, Nothing Seems to Move the Uncertain or Unwilling

 In the beginning, some hesitancy to accept the Covid vaccinations seemed appropriate.  They were developed using novel technologies and appeared with startling speed.  The explanations of their efficacies were often confusing and a bit unsettling.  However, since their introduction, the data from actual usage across many millions of people is consistent with what was promised.  The vaccines are limiting infections and eliminating most serious illness.  One would think that as the time goes on and death and serious illness become the fate experienced almost entirely by the unvaccinated, more people would see the wisdom of vaccination.  In the United States, that is not the case.  A brief note was published in The Economist discussing this continued hesitancy: In America, even full local hospitals do not dent vaccinescepticism.  Included was this chart illustrating increasing acceptance of vaccine efficacy in several countries while that of the US remained nearly stagnant.

 The author was prompted by the tales of vaccine acceptance by the families and friends of unvaccinated deceased or seriously ill Covid sufferers to do some investigating.  She concluded that the actual number of people who were moved by these announcements and the news of filled ICU rooms was miniscule. 

“Our calculations show that full hospitals lead to only a slight increase in the number of people getting vaccinated. For every 10% decrease in available ICU beds, there were roughly 14 additional first doses administered per 100,000 people in a county the next week. For a median-sized American county with a population of 26,000, that translates to 3.5 additional first doses, or just half a dose per day.”

The reader was left with this parting conclusion.

“The remaining Americans who have not had their jabs are not just hesitant but rather hardened—committed to shunning the vaccine despite its availability, safety and efficacy. If the Delta variant, and the wards full of patients suffering from it in local hospitals, cannot change their minds, then it is hard to see what will.”

It is difficult to argue with that assessment, but it begs an answer to the question of why this phenomenon is occurring in the US but not in the other countries. 

A little further research provides some clues in a polling study performed by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF): KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor: July 2021.  KFF has been polling the nation on vaccine status and intentions monthly since December 2020.  Presented here are data from July 2021.  The results are consistent with those presented in the above chart.  What is added are tallies of the intentions of the unvaccinated and the demographics of the respondents.

“The latest KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor finds roughly two-thirds of U.S. adults (67%) saying they have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine with an additional 3% saying they will get vaccinated as soon as they can, as of July 27th. Three in ten adults (31%) remain unvaccinated. Those who remain unvaccinated include 10% who say they want to ‘wait and see’ how the vaccines work for other people before getting vaccinated, 3% who say they will get a vaccine ‘only if required’ to do so for work, school, or other activities (down from 6% in June), and 14% who say they will ‘definitely not’ get the vaccine.” 

The bottom line is that there are about 30% of the population not yet planning on getting vaccinated.  The survey breaks the respondents into 23 different categories.  The top six categories for the already vaccinated consist of Democrats 86%, Ages 65 and older 85%, College graduates 81%, Individuals with serious health condition 74%, and Urban residents73%.  On the other end of the spectrum, we have groups claiming the highest number of those never getting vaccinated: Uninsured under age 65 26%, White evangelical Christians 23%, Ages 18-29 21%, Rural residents 21%, Republicans 20%, Ages 30-49 19%. 

These results are consistent with attitudes toward vaccination having a political tinge.  The difference between urban and rural populations is dramatic.  Rural voters and white evangelicals form the base of the Republican Party.  The role the lack of healthcare plays in vaccine avoidance is unclear, particularly for the younger population.  Are they less likely to get vaccinated because they are young and unconcerned, or does this have something to do with the young being less likely to have healthcare coverage?

The KFF study does provide some interesting data but provides little encouragement.  Throughout Trump’s presidency pundits claimed that 30% of the population were diehard Trump supporters.  That seems to be literally true.

 

The US vs. China: Future Dominance and Common Prosperity

 Matt Pottinger was a Deputy National Security Advisor during the final two years of the Trump administration.  As such, one would expect him to possess a jaundiced opinion of China and its activities.  He does not disappoint, producing a Foreign Affairs article Beijing’s American Hustle: How Chinese Grand Strategy Exploits U.S. Power.  It seems the dastardly deed China is up to is emulating the United States.

“Ever since taking power in 1949, the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has cast the United States as an antagonist. But three decades ago, at the end of the Cold War, Chinese leaders elevated the United States from just one among many antagonists to their country’s primary external adversary—and began quietly revising Chinese grand strategy, embarking on a quest for regional and then global dominance.”

Pottinger seems to believe that it is the destiny of the US to be globally dominant, and if so, then it must be regionally dominant even if the region in question is China’s back yard.  He further indicates that the US must contend with China to insure it does not attain its goals, posing the necessary conflict as one between good and evil: free people must defeat non-free people.

“The United States and other free societies have belatedly woken up to this contest…” 

Any contest between two countries striving for global dominance would have both military and economic aspects.  Pottinger focuses more on the economic issues, but they cannot be isolated from the military.  When China looks out to sea it sees a US armada posing an avowed offensive threat to the mainland.  From the Chinese perspective, the analogous situation would be for China to have fleets of ships patrolling the US east and west coasts in order to strike quickly should war break out and have sufficient presence to blockade any port to prevent any goods from entering the country.  Is it any wonder that the US is viewed as an antagonist?  And in any economic competition, the US is burdened by the need to maintain a worldwide offensive capability which is extremely expensive, highly vulnerable, and relatively ineffective.

It should not have been new to anyone that China was coming for the US as an economic competitor, and that it would have to upgrade its military to counter any threat from the US.  What Pottinger suggests is new to this competition is that China wishes to promote its governance practices as a better model for other countries to emulate than that promoted by the US. 

“That moment has now arrived, and Beijing is no longer bothering to camouflage its global ambitions. Today, party slogans call for China to ‘take center stage’ in the world and build ‘a community of common destiny for mankind.’ This point was displayed vividly in Alaska in March, during the first face-to-face meeting between senior Biden administration officials and their Chinese counterparts. In their opening statements, the Chinese took advantage of the international TV coverage of the meeting to lecture the Americans. ‘I don’t think the overwhelming majority of countries in the world would recognize that the universal values advocated by the United States or that the opinion of the United States could represent international public opinion,’ the senior Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi said as part of a carefully scripted diatribe. Yang juxtaposed ‘United States–style democracy’ with what he called ‘Chinese-style democracy.’ The latter, he contended, enjoys the ‘wide support of the Chinese people,’ while ‘many people within the United States actually have little confidence in the democracy of the United States’. 

“Yang was following instructions issued by Xi at the 19th Party Congress, in October 2017, when the Chinese leader called on party cadres to increase their ideological ‘leadership power’ and ‘discourse power’ in defense of Beijing’s totalitarian brand of socialism, according to the China scholar Matthew Johnson. This process of fighting and winning ideological battles on the global stage was also given a name: the ‘great struggle’.”

What seems to be at stake in this contest is which model can impress the rest of the world by producing the best socioeconomic results for its population.  One might assume that the US with its strong economy and long history as a stable democracy would have an unassailable lead.  That assumption could be extremely naïve.

Let us begin with a brief description of the two contestants. The US is, perhaps, the prototypical capitalist, free-market economy.  Its ability to emerge from World War II physically unscathed with an economy running at full speed provided it with enormous power and influence.  It was in a position to impose its economic beliefs on other nations, and as the owner of the world’s reserve currency, the US dollar, it accrued advantages and privileges no other nation possesses.  It used its wealth and influence to assume the role of “enforcer” maintaining a worldwide military presence to influence and occasionally threaten countries who were deemed to be misbehaving.  This role is characterized by a collection of multination assistance treaties.  As time goes on the efficacy of having the US play this military role has become questionable.  To justify military power on this scale one must have enemies or threats to be dealt with.  Russia, Iran, and China make the list of threats that justify the military posture.  These countries have all proved immune to any attempt by the US to force them to conform to its will.  

Recognizing the increasing irrelevance of its military power, the US has begun to use its economic power to influence the behavior of other nations by imposing sanctions on the unruly.  This approach is quick and easy and produces little blowback, but its efficacy diminishes when applied to large, diverse economies such as the three US “enemies.”  In addition, an overuse of this approach has caused resentment as it forced allies to follow the US lead, whether they wish to or not.  The net result is a diminished ability of the US to impose its will on others.

The US economy functioned best during the glorious postwar years.  Jobs were plentiful and wages were good.  A middle class developed.  In Europe the major nations all rebuilt their economies and established strong social insurance programs that provided families with government provided education, healthcare, childcare, and pensions.  This was much more efficient for them than having to provide those things from private vendors.  This stimulated the growth of healthy and secure middle classes.  The US chose to not follow this path leaving families to pretty much fend for themselves.  As a consequence, the middle class in the US grew to a lesser extent, and its security gradually dissipated as oligarchic forces reasserted themselves.  The net result was most of economic growth was to the benefit of the wealthy while the rest of the nation fell further behind.  Similar trends are observed in European nations, but economic disparity has grown to a lesser extent.  There are policies that could be followed to limit economic inequality, but the democracy provided by the vaunted US Constitution has not allowed them to be brought into play.  If either China or the US wished to present itself as a model for the rest of the world to follow, let it demonstrate that it has produced a system that provides more balanced income and wealth distributions.

As an example of a political system to be emulated by others, it must be recognized that the US is not the country that it claims to be to the rest of the world.  Its constitution was designed so that a minority in favor of slavery could participate in that practice even though a majority of the nation might oppose it.  Built into the system are paths by which minorities can control powers of government, not what one expects from a true democracy.  The US has long been a two-party nation.  For much of its history the two parties have been sufficiently diverse that legislation could be accomplished in bipartisan manner.  Distinct differences persist to the present day between the descendants of the pro-slavery regions and those of the anti-slavery regions.  It is as if two nations are trying to coexist within a single border.  Finally, the political parties became closely aligned with those two internal nations.  Both now view the other as an existential threat and cooperation is almost nonexistent, not much of an example to set for other countries.  The fact that someone like Donald Trump could rise to power as a minority president tells the world that the US system is broken.

China produces more plans than one can easily track.  The US, with its belief in market dominance, seems to believe that the best plan is no plan.  The markets will provide solutions to problems.  People that do produce viable solutions are stymied by political obstructions.  If the US is to provide an example to be followed by other countries in the future, it will have to be because a benign wind blew the drifting nation in the right direction.

 China is run by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  Referring to itself as having a “Chinese-style democracy” would be deemed misleading by just about the entire world.  It does have a complicated hierarchical electoral system beginning at the village or community level and progressing through higher levels of government, but universal participation is not the rule.  Ultimately, the country’s leader is chosen by the higher ups in the CCP and is accorded much more power than a US president.  The economic model being followed is a form of socialism, not communism.  Its socialism incorporates a strong degree of guidance from political leaders, but individual companies conduct their own business with a significant amount of freedom within broad constraints.  Pottinger refers to the Chinese model as a “totalitarian brand of socialism.”  The Chinese president does have near totalitarian powers if he so choses to use them, but he is still accountable to the other leaders of the CCP.

Totalitarian socialism is China’s advantage in pure economic competition.  It is now a big economy with a huge stockpile of economic resources.  It also has a large population, many of whom are still relatively poor, but also many who are highly skilled in engineering and the sciences.  If China’s leader decides that it must build twenty, five-million inhabitant cities to move 100,000 rural citizens to urban environments, it can make that happen.  It has made that happen.  If it decides to be the nation most adept at artificial intelligence, it can assemble the experts and resources needed to pursue that goal without hesitation.  If it decides to overproduce steel products and dump the excess on the open market driving prices down, it can do that as well. 

China’s leaders have the power to act decisively, and rapid changes occur.  Some people benefit from such decisions, but often many suffer.  Thus far the population seems to be willing to endure difficult transitions as long as general prosperity continues its growth.  China’s leaders are highly motivated to maintain a docile population that would in no way threaten their power.  The state is very intrusive in the lives of its citizens, actively promoting ways of thinking that discourage anti-government sentiments.  They impose limits to what information is available to the average person, not a healthy model in the view of most other countries, but one tolerated at home. 

China seems poised to move to a second phase of its development.  After becoming the manufacturing center for the world and using that approach to expand its wealth, technical capabilities, and influence, a new focus has emerged.  It claims to be moving in a direction that other countries, including the US, recommended to it: to balance its economy by producing stronger local consumption.  However, Pottinger sees it as a newer form of threat to the US 

“Beijing’s economic objectives are couched in a policy called ‘dual circulation,’ which prioritizes domestic consumption (internal circulation) over dependence on foreign markets (external circulation). A close look, however, shows that this Chinese strategy can really be thought of as ‘offensive leverage’—an approach designed to decrease China’s dependence on high-tech imports (while making the world’s technology supply chains increasingly dependent on China), ensure that China can easily substitute imports from one country with the same imports from another, and use China’s economic leverage to advance the CCP’s political objectives around the globe.” 

In any event, this redirection is likely to be of benefit to the average Chinese citizen.  China’s form of capitalism produced a high degree of income inequality.  That is what capitalism seems to want to do.  China’s is about as bad as that of the United States.  If China really wished to impress the rest of the world it would come up with a plan that demonstrated it could produce growth, prosperity, and limited economic inequality.  There is some evidence that that is what is now on their horizon. 

An article in The Economist titled Xi Jinping’s talk of “common prosperity” spooks the prosperous suggests big changes are afoot in China.

“In a speech in 2016 Xi Jinping, China’s president, explored the roots of an idea that is now troubling the country’s tycoons and depressing the stockmarket—an idea that may be motivating China’s crackdown on private tutoring, its antitrust fines on internet firms, its new guidelines on the treatment of gig workers and its steps towards a property tax, as well as inspiring large charitable donations from some of the country’s most prominent enterprises. That idea is common prosperity.”

“The term has appeared 65 times in Mr Xi’s speeches or meetings this year, according to Bloomberg. A recent example is the powerful Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission, which sets and enforces the party line on the economy. It focused on the idea at its meeting on August 17th.”

The term is ill defined.  It will allow energetic, creative, and entrepreneurial types to be rewarded financially for their efforts, but within limits.

“But the goal also rules out a continuation of the status quo. ‘We must not allow the gap between rich and poor to get wider,’ Mr Xi insisted in January. People in the top fifth of Chinese households enjoy a disposable income more than ten times as high as people in the bottom fifth, according to official figures. Disposable incomes in cities are two and a half times as high as in the countryside. And the top 1% own 30.6% of household wealth, according to Credit Suisse, a bank (compared with 31.4% in America).”

“Common prosperity will require a stronger safety-net for the unfortunate, better pensions, more equal access to public services, including education and health. It will result in an “olive-shaped” distribution of income that is fat in the middle but thin at the bottom and top. China has about 400m people living on incomes between 100,000 and 500,000 yuan (roughly $15,000-77,000) for a family of three or the equivalent. It wants to double that number to 800m people in about a decade, according to the Development Research Centre, a think-tank attached to China’s State Council.”

“The party says it will increase the role of taxation in fighting inequality. It will adjust high incomes “reasonably”. But it has yet to quantify that reasonableness by specifying future tax rates or thresholds.”

China seems to have a plan.  If the world has learned anything, it is that China pays attention to its plans.

“Just because common prosperity remains nebulous does not, however, mean it is vacuous. ‘Achieving common prosperity is not only an economic issue, but also a significant political issue,’ Mr Xi said in January. The party hopes that reviving this ancient ideal will help strengthen the foundations of its rule. Confucius again got there first. ‘Where there is contentment,’ the sage says, ‘there will be no upheavals’.” 

If China can rein in its growing economic equality while maintaining a healthy economy and a satisfied citizenry, it will have demonstrated that a highly regulated and directed economy is a viable model for other countries to follow.  It is easier to see China accomplishing that than the US.  But that doesn’t necessarily make it the best example to follow.  The Scandinavian countries have already provided the appropriate socioeconomic conditions without an overbearing state presence.  The models to emulate already exist.

 

Policing, Politics, and Police Unions

 Policing and racial discrimination in our country have been deeply and permanently intertwined.  In On the Origins of Police Violence we discussed how policing in the United States has always been focused on applying violence to those who would be deemed enemies of society.  In the beginning, the targets were escaped or unruly slaves, they would progress to blacks who did not respect Jim Crow laws and immigrants considered undesirable.  They were later tasked with breaking heads of union activists and maintaining segregation in northern and western cities as blacks migrated from the South.  The techniques of delivering violence would be borrowed from military organization and military experiences resulting in a perverse perspective on what the role of policing is in a modern society.  Rather than organizing to provide a service to the community employing them, often police structure themselves as a force to control an enemy.  Eventually all the enemies except blacks and a few illegal immigrants faded away, but the violent origins left a persistent legacy. 

Adam Serwer provides an interesting perspective on the recent history of policing in our society with a focus on the emergence of police unions after the civil rights era.  His article was titled Bust the Police Unions in the paper version of The Atlantic.  It became The Authoritarian Instincts of Police Unions in the online version.  He opens with this lede.

“They condition their members to see themselves as soldiers at war with the public they are meant to serve, and above the laws they are meant to enforce.”

Serwer uses the response of the Minneapolis police union to George Floyd’s death as an example of the worst in police mentality. 

“Most Americans who watched the video of Floyd begging for his life, as Officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck, saw a human being. Robert Kroll did not. The head of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis saw a ‘violent criminal’ and viewed the protests that followed as a ‘terrorist movement.’ In a letter to union members, he complained that Chauvin and the three other officers involved in Floyd’s death had been ‘terminated without due process’.” 

“Kroll’s response was typical. In the apocalyptic rhetoric of police-union leaders, every victim of police misconduct is a criminal who had it coming, and anyone who objects to such misconduct is probably also a criminal, and, by implication, a legitimate target of state violence. Due process is a privilege reserved for the righteous—that is, police officers who might lose their jobs, not the citizens who might lose their lives in a chance encounter with law enforcement.” 

George Floyd’s death initiated a series of demonstrations against police brutality, particularly against blacks.  The anger at that incident was sufficiently widespread that police and their agencies seemed to be losing their hold on the support of the general public.  This would not be the first time the nation found itself in such a position.

“In the early 20th century, the widespread ineffectiveness and corruption of police departments had sparked a reform movement. In 1931, the Wickersham Commission, appointed by Herbert Hoover, issued a report on ‘Lawlessness in Law Enforcement,’ which documented a range of abuses, including ‘physical brutality, illegal detention, and refusal to allow access of counsel to the prisoner.’ These were particularly common when police interacted with Black people and immigrants.”

This investigation would lead to improvements in police performance, but it did not eliminate tendencies towards unnecessary violence.  A second attempt to reform police performance was driven by the civil-rights movement. 

“The civil-rights movement was a rebellion against the law. It had to be. And the police were called upon to crush it. Many of the most iconic images of the era were representations of police brutality: the Birmingham police siccing dogs on protesters, Alabama state troopers beating marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Atlanta cops manhandling Martin Luther King Jr. after arresting him at a sit-in.”

There was outrage at these violent episodes prompting the supreme Court to rein in some of the worst practices.

“In a series of decisions, the Court compelled cops to inform suspects of their rights, barred the use of evidence obtained through illegal search and seizure, and gave all defendants a right to counsel. These decisions curtailed, even if they did not eliminate, many of the lawless practices described by the Wickersham Commission.” 

However, policing is ultimately a local issue.  There are many thousands of independent police agencies which can contend with local authorities over control of their actions.  While the Supreme Court was trying to tie their hands, policing authorities were at the same time developing new forms of leverage and accumulating new allies willing to let them behave as they saw fit. 

“To many police officers, the reforms were simply pro-criminal. These incursions on their long-standing prerogatives spurred unionization efforts around the country. “The police unionism movement, which emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was a reaction to new efforts to bring the police under democratic control,” David Sklansky, a Stanford Law professor and the author of Democracy and the Police, told me.”

“If the civil-rights movement drew fresh scrutiny to police abuses, however, the backlash to the movement provided the police with new allies and new opportunities. For most white voters, riots and clashes with police in Black neighborhoods in 1967 and ’68 confirmed that liberal efforts to alleviate racial inequality had failed and that overwhelming force was the answer. ‘Unions discovered that they had a lot of power, that in union contract negotiations, they could play the crime card,’ Samuel Walker, a historian of American policing and a professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, told me.”

It is noteworthy that one the police organizations’ biggest supporters was George Wallace.

“Among the unions’ most ardent champions in the tumult of the ’60s was the segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace, a Democrat. ‘The police in this country are a beleaguered group,’ Wallace said in an interview republished by The New York Times in 1967. They deserved ‘praise’ for beating civil-rights marchers in Selma—or, as he put it, for shutting down the ‘unlawful assembly’ there. In a speech before the convention of the Fraternal Order of Police that same year, Wallace drew a standing ovation as he called for a literal police state: ‘If the police of this country could run it for about two years, then it would be safe to walk in the streets’.”

Police organization moved openly to associate crime with race and use the underlying racial anxieties to earn the allegiance of much of the citizenry.

“Americans who would never have personally identified with Wallace tacitly took a version of the trade that he’d offered: Give the police impunity, and they will give you order.”

Police unions realized that they had a tremendous amount of leverage in negotiating with local politicians.  The police usually had firm, long-term support from the voters, whereas the influence of politicians was fleeting at best.  Often, those who would negotiate terms of a union agreement with the police were in need of police support in order to be elected.  With a strong hand, the unions would negotiate pay and benefit packages, but often their main concern was with eliminating oversight of their activities by civilian reviewers.

“The damage that these types of provisions have done is hard to overstate. In one recent study, the economist Rob Gillezeau of the University of Victoria found that after departments unionized, there was a ‘substantial increase’ in police killings of civilians. Neither crime rates nor the safety of officers themselves was affected.”

“The provisions do more than simply protect bad actors. They cultivate an unhealthy and secretive culture within police departments, strengthening a phenomenon known as the code of silence.”

“Michael Quinn, a retired Minneapolis police officer and the author of Walking With the Devil, told me, ‘The whole problem with the code of silence is not so much that cops don’t want to report misconduct, but that there’s no accountability for the officers that are involved in misconduct. And if a department’s not gonna hold them accountable, why should they step up’?”

“This is not a system ruined by a few bad apples. This is a system that creates and protects bad apples by design…individual good intentions cannot overcome a system intended to render them meaningless. Being a good cop can get you in trouble with your superiors, your fellow officers, and the union that represents you. Being a bad one can get you elected as a union rep.”

Our big cities must maintain a large police force.  A cadre of armed officers whose allegiance to its own organization is greater than to its community is a constant threat to democratic processes.  Consider the state of affaires in New York City as described by William Finnegan in an article for The New Yorker: How Police Unions Fight Reform.

“In many cities, including New York, the unions are a political force, their endorsements and campaign donations coveted by both Republicans and Democrats. The legislation they support tends to get passed, their candidates elected. They insist on public displays of respect and may humiliate mayors who displease them. They defy reformers, including police chiefs, who struggle to fire even the worst-performing officers. In an era when other labor unions are steadily declining in membership and influence, police unions have kept their numbers up, their coffers full.” 

“In their interstitial safe zone, police unions can offer their members extraordinary protections. Officers accused of misconduct may be given legal representation paid for by the city, and ample time to review evidence before speaking to investigators. In many cases, suspended officers have their pay guaranteed, and disciplinary recommendations of oversight boards are ignored. Complaints submitted too late are disqualified. Records of misconduct may be kept secret, and permanently destroyed after as little as sixty days.”

David Dinkins became the first, and only, black mayor of New York City.  He had the temerity to attempt to install a civilian review board to cover police activities.  The largest police union, the Police Benevolent Association (PBA), expressed its displeasure by rioting in the streets.

“When Mayor David Dinkins sought to install a civilian review board, in 1992, the P.B.A. staged a ferocious protest at City Hall, with ten thousand off-duty officers, virtually all white and many carrying guns and drinking alcohol. Demonstrators waved racist placards—'Dump the Washroom Attendant’—attacked reporters and bystanders, vandalized City Council members’ cars, stormed City Hall, and overflowed onto the Brooklyn Bridge, where they stopped traffic and jumped on occupied cars. It was a wild performance of police impunity, and the on-duty officers did nothing to stop the mayhem.”

“Jimmy Breslin was there, reporting for Newsday, and he described a scene of toxic racism. ‘The cops held up several of the most crude drawings of Dinkins, black, performing perverted sex acts,’ he wrote. Newsday had more. A city councilwoman, Una Clarke, who is Black, was prevented from crossing Broadway ‘by a beer-drinking, off-duty police officer who said to his sidekick, ‘This nigger says she’s a member of the City Council.’  As the rally surged, Rudolph Giuliani, a former prosecutor, stood on a car, leading obscene chants through a bullhorn. He defeated Dinkins the next year and went on to two terms as mayor.”

“Dinkins ultimately succeeded in installing a civilian complaint-review board, but its disciplinary recommendations to the department are rarely followed. In public, the union trashes its every step.” 

The NYPD is the oldest and largest police force in the United States.  With 36,000 well-armed uniformed officers it is an army; one that has demonstrated that it can be mobilized as a single unit to counter any move to which it objects.  Its tools are political leverage and the constant threat of massive civil disobedience if provoked. 

Yes, our major cities must maintain armies.  But these armies that have the power to shelter themselves from democratic processes and civilian accountability if they so choose.  Why should this be allowed?  Serwer concludes his article with considerations of this issue.

“In democratic societies, the use of state-sanctioned violence is meant to be constrained by the rule of law. Instead, led by their unions, the police in America have become a constituency with a strong interest in the ability to dispense violence with impunity. Such a constituency will have a natural affinity for authoritarianism. And having leveraged a racist backlash to establish their grip on power, such unions will inevitably attract the support of those who see the preservation of racial hierarchy as paramount.”

Consider the other possessor of a mandate for state-sanctioned violence: our military forces.  Would we allow soldiers to form a union and negotiate for the terms of civilian oversight?

“Yet the military—hardly exempt from questions about fair pay or capricious leadership—lacks a union. This is a matter of tradition, not law, but it reflects an understanding that such an organized political entity would be dangerous, placing the military beyond democratic accountability and civilian control. Instead, the military relies on public support, which means its members must maintain an outward stance of political neutrality—even when a sitting president expects them to interfere on his behalf.”

Something has gone terribly wrong in our system of policing.  With around 18,000 individual police departments across the nation, we cannot expect each community to gain control and impose appropriate constraints on its police force.  Some communities have shown that competent and effective police forces can be assembled given the appropriate training and management.  Massive restructuring of policing in this nation will require national rules for use in recruiting, training, and oversight.