This fact, and the AFL-CIO's tepid press releases about opposing racism and police violence, while doing nothing productive to oppose racism or police violence has understandably enraged many. The AFL-CIO leadership is now under increased pressure to at the very least sever formal ties with police unions. The tensions have escalated to the point that the AFL-CIO headquarters was ransacked and set on fire.
I'm not surprised, I have no love for the AFL-CIO as an organisation, but their stubborness on this issue never mind their decision to allow affiliation with police unions in the first place shows just how useless and clueless its top officials are if we give them the benefit of the doubt and take them at their word they do in fact want to build a powerful labour movement that changes the USA for the better.
Police unions are a powerful entity to lobby and increase the power of the police, and it is the police who are in the vast majority of cases the main opposition to the labour movement. Like racist murders, corruption and protection from consequences for shocking acts of violence this relationship is not remotely unique to the United States. The reason the US finds itself the centre of discussion and on the frontlines of the tensions so often is because its just more overt and blunt about it.
Even in my community we have ample examples of the police being structured by design to be the enemy of the labour movement. After the 2010 elections and the coalition between the Tories and the Libdems was formed, they immediately carried out sweeping austerity policies, this wasn't a surprise, the Tories had been moaning about over spending since 1997, and the global financial crisis gave them ample justifications. What was surprising was that the police were part of the cuts and cost saving packages, usually they were ring fenced, but this time they faced spending freezes, recruitment cuts and privatisation of some of their functions to cheaper options.
This genuinely alarmed the leadership of the police and they took action. They turned to their friends in the press and television media and appealed to the British public warning them about the dangers of reduced numbers of officers, and having to do much more with less, they won't be able to patrol the community etc. The other thing they did was use the Police Federation, (the equivalent of a union that performs many of the same functions, but with greater restrictions) to build links with the TUC. So you had this strange phenomena of police officers marching in anti-austerity demonstrations.
I remember taking part in a demonstration in my town to support one of public sector "general strikes" which was a symbolic one day strike mainly carried out by Unison and UNITE and the FBU, with support from the local Labour party and the Socialist Party of England and Wales/TUSC. When I got there I saw at the back two officers holding a banner from the Police Federation. I decided to keep my distance and moved as far as possible from them. I made small talk with some people I recognised while waiting for the speeches to start.
I got talking to a couple of Labour councillors I knew, and one of them made comments about how disgusting it was that the police were here and taking part as equals. This surprised me greatly, not just because he was a Labour councillor, but he was also the kindest man I've ever met, I had never heard him say a bad thing about anyone before. He then pointed something out to me that I had completely missed, around the corner parked just out of view from the main street but so it could see us clearly was a police riot van full of about 6-8 coppers with their helmets and riot gear on ready to go if things should kick off.
Even when they were officially part of the opposition the police did not relax from its mandate to police and control and should it prove necessary bludgeon its "allies". Of course nothing happened, it was a purely token show of force by a local Trades Council and even the speeches were mild, and we all drifted off. But it still a threat of potential violence.
He then told me how he never would trust or forgive a policeman, and I should do the same. The cause of his unconcealed loathing was the Miners strike of 84/85. There weren't many pits in Lincolnshire at the time but Yorkshire isn't far away, so when the police started to lock counties down they also did the same to us. At the time he was active in Miner's solidarity, and would take food parcels into Yorkshire pit towns, that is when the police let them. Often what they did was pull the cars over line everyone up by the roadside, threaten them, slap some of them around and throw all the supplies in a ditch, usually while laughing and cracking jokes.
This was not the only example of police power in my area during that time. In an attempt to break the strike the government imported vast quantities of coal, a lot of which came from Apartheid South Africa and the military dictatorship of Poland.
A lot of that coal, and iron needed for keeping the steelworks going came through the ports on the east coast and the Humber. The TGWU leadership did nothing, but a lot of the dockworkers in my area decided to take matters into their own hands and either refused to offload shipments, or agreed to do so and then "blacked" [ruined] them. Things really kicked off when in an attempt to get around militant dockers, non unionised workers were brought in as form of scab labour, this forced the TGWU to call a national strike after the local dockworkers had forced its hand.
The government response was to tighten the repression and send police into the ports to break up pickets and guard trucks (the local freight train engineers also refused to transport suspected materials that would be used to break the Miners strike) .
Apparently this alarmed the government so much that they were planning on deploying troops to break the strike, but the TGWU let the strike breakdown by July, so the government relaxed.
Margaret Thatcher was so scared of losing her battle with striking miners she secretly plotted to send in 4,500 troops to crush them, official records reveal today.
The former PM came closer than ever thought to military action amid fears the increasingly bitter industrial action could destroy her Tory government.
Thatcher considered declaring a state of emergency to bring in the brutal measures after dockers also walked out.
Hundreds of miners and their supporters had already been injured during fierce clashes with riot police at picket lines in some of the worst industrial violence Britain had ever witnessed.
But declassified National Archive papers show Thatcher was also prepared to use the Army as a tool of the state to break the strike as part of her dogged campaign against the National Union of Mineworkers.
The Government had been locked in a long war of attrition with NUM chief Arthur Scargill when a dispute at Immingham docks on the Humber blew up into a national strike in 1984.https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/miners-strike-margaret-thatcher-prepared-2981964
Of course this is worlds away from the US of the AFL-CIO leadership, perhaps they've just never experienced this side of policing? Well, no they have done, the current President of the AFL-CIO is Richard Trumka. He obtained that position based on his work as President of the United Mineworkers of America (UMWA). During his presidency the UMWA fought a nine month battle at the Pittston Coal mine 1989-90. The police were very active, over 4,000 arrests were made of picketers and the strike became well known for its violent confrontation. And that's just one example, the history of miners in the US is possibly the bloodiest in labour history. So, no if anything Trumka at least knows full well what the police do and how meaningless it is to have them affiliated. And the AFL-CIO is persisting in providing this very hostile force access to tools and support for it to make it self even more powerful and hostile.
At a bare minimum police and prison officer unions should be disaffiliated and left to stand or fall on their own.
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