The views and opinions written in this article are those of the author and do not represent WMSC or Montclair State University.
Due to the death of George Floyd there has been much attention on the issue of police brutality and there has been a push for increased racial sensitivity training and body cameras. While I am in favor of these measures there is a bigger issue that has to be addressed in preventing crooked cops such as Derek Chauvin from roaming the streets and instances such as the death of George Floyd from occurring. The main problem is that in blue states such as Minnesota the politicians pass measures that make it impossible for public sector workers to be fired for any reason. The liberal politicians pass measures that allow for public sector unions to negotiate any terms of employment that they desire. Due to this most public sector jobs have job security for life especially teaching where teachers can receive tenure after a certain amount of time. Derek Chauvin had 18 prior instances of misconduct however they did not terminate his employment for this or even reprimand him due to the strong negotiating power of public sector unions. Derek Chauvins union representatives were able to get him out of trouble and back out patrolling the streets of Minneapolis. To prevent instances like this from occurring we have to implement what is called adversarial collective bargaining. The way we achieve adversarial collective bargaining and prevent public sector employees from negotiating contracts with job security for life is by electing public officials to public office that will support and implement adversarial collective bargaining and not simply give public sector employees the job security that makes it virtually impossible to fire bad apples. One common theme of these instances of police brutality such as in the case of George Floyd is that they happen to take place in blue cities in blue states despite liberal politicians passing legislation that is supposedly supposed to curtail instances of police brutality and abuse of power. Therefore this demonstrates the need for adversarial collective bargaining among public sector unions and the government as the government needs to be allowed the ability to fire police officers such as Derek Chauvin, however they are unable to due to the liberal governors conceding to public sector unions and negotiating job security that essentially guarantees a job for life. If the United States had governors that do not always give in to public sector unions demands to have contracts that make it impossible for their employees to be fired for any reason dirty cops such as Derek Chauvin would have been shown the door a long time ago and victims of police brutality such as George Floyd would still be alive today.
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Article By Thomas Tarter
Photo sourced from wikimedia.com under Creative Commons License
