By wide margins, the rank-and-file members of both the San Francisco POA and the San Jose POA recently approved labor contracts with economic concessions. This was by no means an easy or uncontroversial process. Indeed, acrimony attended all sides of the debate, with some community leaders attempting to vilify the unions for not giving back more and some union members pointedly criticizing their associations, since no one wants to see their paychecks reduced. And yet, these twin votes constituted as sure a victory as any pay raise, strange as that may sound.
Let me attempt to clarify this re-definition of "victory." I will borrow the words of police union compensation expert and negotiator par excellence, Ron York of policepay.net:
Dunkirk has become the symbol for retreat and many times is portrayed as an act of weakness. This image is completely false. Dunkirk was not a cowardly act by the British. It was a brilliant maneuver that eventually contributed to the ultimate victory. Dunkirk was the best alternative to a certain defeat at the hands of the Germans. Today, many police unions find themselves in the same position as the British in 1940, having to choose between certain defeat and retreat. The rational choice is obvious. Unfortunately, ego and pride often get in the way. Most police unions need to be in damage control mode until there is an improvement to the economy. The goal is to hold any damage to a minimum and live to battle another day. Now is the time to build the relationships that will be needed later. If you have a contract that is not up for negotiations and your city wants to renegotiate the current year pay increase, impose furloughs, or other cost reductions, meet with them. It is okay to make concessions . . . Let go of the bravado. Just focus on the long term goal. The road to success is not straight. Retreat and compromise is not a sign of weakness.
York's re-definition of victory makes a great deal of sense in this current economic climate where concessionary bargaining has become the norm if layoffs are to be avoided. But to arrive at that new definition, you have to understand just what is at stake and how the entire notion of "fighting back" has been radically transformed from what it was thought to be only a few years ago.
If saying "No" to economic concessions - what one usually defines as "fighting back" - means the loss of members' jobs because of layoffs, such a posture hardly results in any sort of "victory" for the officers laid off. And it is by no means certain that the public will not ultimately blame the unions themselves for those lost jobs, as our enemies mount a campaign aimed to portray us as "greedy unions" who would sooner sacrifice their own members than agree to even modest concessions. As a labor lawyer colleague of mine in Southern California put it recently, many on the management side are hoping for precisely that: police labor and other public employee unions will ultimately choose to reject all concessions, thereby resulting in layoffs, which in turn will poison the public against the entire concept of public employee unionism. (And if you think such a gloomy scenario is just so much hyperbole, look no further than the various legislative efforts gathering steam to implement "pension reform" and roll back binding arbitration.)
But perhaps the surest sign that concessions can, paradoxically, equate to victory came in an e-mail I received last week from a well known labor arbitrator in California who has ruled on many cases where public safety unions who, lacking the right to strike, opted in earlier, better economic times to "fight back" in the traditional sense of the phrase by saying "No" to their respective public agencies at the bargaining table and, instead, proceeding to arbitration. This arbitrator expressed admiration and respect for the concessionary contract just ratified by the rank and file of the San Jose POA. I don't know any clearer sign of victory than having arbitrators - the private judges who ultimately hold our fate in their hands when we choose to "fight back" and go to arbitration - approve precisely of our having taken the opposite path for the good of our members and the preservation of public safety. Now that is victory.
"Roll the Union On . . ."
