It's nice to start off the New Year with some good news. Earlier this week, I wrote in a piece in The New York Daily News that, sadly, the New York labor movement had been basically silent in the face of the rants, bile and venom spilling from the mouth of the head of the police union in NYC. There may be some movement here.
This via Buzzfeed yesterday:
New York City’s top progressives have backed away from any direct confrontation with the city’s largest police union, even as union leaders continue to criticize the mayor following the shooting of two officers.
But the silence of non-police unions may not last long into the new year.
That will depend on the actions of Patrick Lynch, the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, and whether he continues his public campaign against Mayor Bill de Blasio, sources with knowledge of union thinking say. Unions were instrumental in getting de Blasio elected and are considered among his closest allies.
Who knows whether this actually has legs beyond the anonymous sources quoted. But, it's important for people in unions to keep this issue alive--the critique and the demand to speak up is more credible coming from those who are union members and supports of the movement.
8:55 AM PT: Friends: IMHO, this should not turn into a general unsupported attack on police unions using words like "scab" unions. Over-the-top rhetoric does not help the main focus of this discussion: that is, that the labor movement has to make clear it doesn't support the rhetoric by the **president of the NYC PBA** who is dividing the city and, as I initially wrote, whose rhetoric does not symbolize what many of us consider to be the unifying principles of unions.