Comment on Should law enforcement workers form unions?

roofuskit@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• xmunk@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Yup. And while police unions are awful it’s a call to fix how police unions are formed and supported rather than deunionizing the police entirely.

  The saying is a bad apple spoils the bunch and there are a fuckton of bad apples in the police.

  source
• gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  And policing isn’t labor. So police unions should not exist.

  source

  • bilb@lem.monster ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I think it would be considered non-productive labor in the Marxist sense.

    source
  • roofuskit@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Oh they’re capital are they? I didn’t know they were ownership class.

    source

    • Bronzebeard@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      They protect the ownership class FROM labor.

      source
• jerkface@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Police aren’t labour.

  source

  • Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Yes, that’s the reality. But if they actually operated the way people have been led to believe they do, then they would be as much of a labor force as the fire department.

    We should talk about getting the police to actually being the fairy tale people think it is first, though.

    source

    • jerkface@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      That is impossible. If they didn’t do violence to citizens of a state on behalf of the state, then they are not police. They would be something else. A “citizen service league” or something.

      source
  • roofuskit@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Yeah, great other working stuffs as the enemy, that’ll help.

    Change hiring practices, change training, police can be a benefit.

    source

    • jerkface@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      No. It will not help. The problem is not the individuals we hire. It is the job we hire them for. The JOB is not labour. It is violence. The purpose of the police is to maintain the state’s “legitimate monopoly on violence.” The reason every police officer exists in every nation is to do violence against members of a state on behalf of that state’s needs.

      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

      Police are not labour and this is well known. So well known that technically, police in North America (and likely other jurisdictions) are not allowed to form unions. If you take a close look at the “police unions” in North America, you will find that they are all actually “police associations.” They don’t enjoy the same rights and powers as an actual union, but they adopt all the trappings so that people don’t realize, and don’t think about the true relationship between citizen, state, and the police.

      source