[Vision2020] Moscow's Police Need Your Support

[Donovan Arnold]

Like most people, I am happy with the job our police force is doing.  Unions are great for the people that like them. The trouble with the  SEIU is that you have to join to be a police officer in the future if  we adopt this program. The SEIU engages in political activism that many  people may disagree with. In other words, members fees go to things  like supporting political candidates and political positions that  members my not agree with.
  
 I would suggest that we just pay  our police officers similar salaries as the SEIU members get. I don't  want the city to only be able to have officers that are members of the  SEIU. We should be able to pick officers  outside that   organization based on merit, skills, and what is needed for our city.
  
  But I do agree with Nick Gier that we should talk about it. 
  
  Take Care,
  
  _DJA 

nickgier at adelphia.net wrote:  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

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