Free Speech, Part III

Police, Fire and Teacher's unions are protesting outside of Madison Square Garden.  The protests began yesterday in an effort to call attention to the lack of a contract with the city.  The strange thing is the unity of three groups that are normally at odds.  The real culprit here, at least from the police perspective is the concept of horizontal pattern bargaining.  Governed by the Taylor law, and therefore forbidden to strike and bound by an arbitration process that many feel is slanted toward the city, police unions must face an uphill battle for any type of raises.  What absolutely kills them is the use by the city of a "pattern" such as the pact recently signed by DC 37.  Continued use of the pattern has resulted in rather low pay for police officers relative to other jurisdictions, but relatively high pay for teachers and firemen when compared nationally.  For some interesting data on this see this site.   See this site for a survey of teacher's pay.  And click here for information on firefighters.


- posted by Base10 @ 10:25 AM