By: Rick Tracy
I think it’s official—I am an old-timer in police work. I have been a cop for 27 years and spent four years before that as a dispatcher and police cadet. That’s 31 years of working for police departments and wearing a uniform. I’ve also spent almost 20 years as a union officer for my department.
On occasion, we at MAP hear “what do we need a union for,” “we’d be better off without a union,” or “what has the union done for me?” We have union chapters where few, if any, members want to hold the elected offices for the chapter.
In the late 70’s and early 80’s there was a big push by officers to unionize their departments. Prior to 1985, a department could unionize but the employer had no obligation to recognize or negotiate with the union. As you can guess there were not a lot of unionized departments. One of the few was my town of Mount Prospect, which was allowed to join a union in 1973. In 1985, the collective bargaining law went into effect giving all police over a certain size the right to unionize and be recognized. Most of those officers who waged the battles to join a union and negotiate the first contracts are gone now. They have been replaced by those of you who are reading this article. Us “old guys” who learned from our union pioneers will be retiring soon. I think we have not done a good enough job teaching you new guys why unions are necessary in police work.
When I became a cop, the job was looked at as a steady one you would not get laid off from or fired. There were other things involved, including carrying a gun, driving fast, and for a time, virtually immune from getting tickets. Making a lot of money was not in the description. You were almost like a fireman; you got hired then started looking for a part time job. The difference between us and the fireman is we had to lose sleep to work our second jobs. I worked as a roofer, helped do construction and stood in a jewelry store for hours wearing a security guard shirt. I worked with other cops on all these jobs. I didn’t do it for spending money, I did it to pay the bills. There are still a lot of officers working side jobs out there. But if you check I’m sure you will find the percentage is far less now than 20 years ago.
Even though my department was unionized, the pay was still low. I started in 1980 at $13,356 a year. Our contract guaranteed benefits, days off and overtime. Pay was still low because you still had to compare yourself to other departments to make your case for a pay raise.
Things began changing in 1985 when MAP and other unions started organizing departments and negotiating contracts. Once a few contracts were negotiated with substantial pay raises, they became comparables. It was the unions fighting for the raises, not the employers giving them out of the kindness of their hearts. In the last 20 years, salaries for police officers represented by MAP have soared. Most of our contracts for officers in the Chicagoland area have salaries that have topped $70,000 and will continue to rise.
Unions have also benefited you in other ways.
Most departments are now on permanent shifts. Until contracts, you usually rotated shifts every 28 days or so. You young guys might not like being on midnights, but trust me, it is a lot better than rotating. When you rotate you never got a chance to get any stability into your life. When I rotated my stomach was always upset and like most other cops I lived on Rolaids and Pepto-Bismol.
You are guaranteed overtime. In the good old days your boss would just change your days off so he wouldn’t have to pay overtime to fill a shift. It wasn’t uncommon to come to work one day and find you no longer had the weekend off. There are still non-union departments that still operate this way.
Contracts give both sides a rule book to go by. They also provide a grievance procedure when you feel they have violated the rules.
Unions also provide you with legal defense assistance when your department wants to discipline you. A lot of officers take this for granted. If you get in trouble and they want to take your job away or suspend you for a period of time, you just call MAP. We assign one of our attorneys to handle your situation and the hearing before the Commission or Merit Board. We pay for everything. Before MAP, if you wanted to fight for your job you had to find an attorney who knew what to do and pay for him yourself. I do not know many cops who have the thousands of dollars laying around to pay for attorney fees.
The same holds true if you are involved in a shooting or other critical incident. You call MAP and we send you an attorney to watch out for your rights. Some officers really believe if they shoot someone their employers will “take care of them.” When you’re involved in a shooting incident, the only thing your employer is concerned about is protecting themselves—not you.
Unions lobby for laws that benefit our members who are the rank and file officers of the department. It is the unions who fight for better pensions and laws protecting our officers. Do you think the Illinois Municipal League, the sheriff’s or police chief’s organization lobby for anything that would cost the employer money?
There are many other things you take for granted that a union has provided for you. If some of you get your wish and the unions start going away, it will not take long for all your benefits to disappear. Just imagine not knowing if you will get a pay raise next year or a pay cut; or not knowing if your family will have insurance coverage, or if, God forbid, you get killed or disabled in the line of duty, whether or not your family will be taken care of.
So you young guys and girls, instead of questioning whether or not you need a union, it’s time to get involved with it. All of us old guys will be leaving before you know it. It will be up to you to keep all of our gains and to improve on them.
So get involved, attend your chapter meetings, stay strong, and think MAP.