Police Unions and Public Sector Labor Law and Policy

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the history of law and policy on police unions, from the Boston police strike of 1919 to modern debates over whether police unions increase abusive policing. Concerns about police unions have long driven debates that have affected all public sector unions in terms of labor law rules, policy, and even the structure of the public sector labor movement generally. Such concerns delayed the passage of the first statute granting any public employees the right to bargain collectively in Wisconsin in 1959. The chapter concludes by analyzing modern criticisms of police unions, now from the political left, and some statutory amendments made in response to those criticisms.