[Vision2020] Moscow's Police Need Your Support

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Greetings:

The Moscow police force from sargents down have voted unanimously to be represented by the Service Employees International Union, the most progressive and fastest growing union in the U.S.  

There will be an open administrative meeting of the City Council at 4:30 tomorrow in the Council Chambers.  I urge interested Visionaries to go and support your police force with your voice and/or presence.

The staff and some members of the City Council are still resisting representative democracy in the workplace.  One of their concerns is that the union is too expensive for them.  That's rather presumptuous of someone to be telling someone else how he/she should budget his/her own money.  Perhaps our good officers have reasoned (correctly I believe) the cost of union dues will come back to them in a professional wage and job security, but most of all their very dignity as city workers.  Just across the border unionized Pullman police make $9 more per hour.

If the UI had gone to a salary scale based on the federal GS-system back in 1976 and if we had received the same wages that federal employees got during that time, I would have retired at $50,000 more per year.  I would have paid much more in taxes, I would have given much more to charity, and I would have spent much more in the local economy. 

I've written more on this issue at http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/police.htm.

Nick Gier, President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO