Unionized Cops?

In 1919, the never-ending American debate on public morals had on its agenda the question: Do policemen have a right to strike? More than 1,000 members of an A.F.L. policemen's union in Boston took the affirmative. Calvin Coolidge, then governor of Massachusetts, replied: "There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time." He sent the state militia into Boston to restore order, and broke the strike. Overwhelmingly, the nation agreed with Coolidge, and the issue was as thoroughly settled as such questions ever are. Last week it was back again in a slightly disguised form.

Mike Quill, raucous president of the C.I.O. Transport Workers Union, and a backslid Communist Party-liner, announced that he was ready to charter the first police union in New York City history and that he was busy organizing New York's 18,600 cops. He promised that his union would not strike, but on that point city officials did not trust Quill.

Police Commissioner George P. Monaghan had a decisive reply to Mike Quill: he issued an order forbidding policemen to join labor unions. A policeman, like a soldier, may not strike, cannot give even part of his loyalty to a union. Union cops, he pointed out, could hardly be expected to police strikes by brother unionists.

Quill, who claimed that 4,800 policemen had joined and another 5,000 had "pledged," met the order with characteristic language: "His [Monaghan's] 'I-am-the-law' order is intended to chain New York's 'finest' to their intolerable working conditions, low wages and long hours, through Iron Curtain tactics. It betrays an utter lack of confidence in the integrity of New York's policemen, who deeply and bitterly resent the coercive threats of this stumbling, petty dictator." Then he rushed the roster of his union out of the state so that it could not be seized, announced he would organize secretly, and filed suit for an injunction against the Monaghan ban.

Everyone agreed that the New York policeman's lot is not a happy one. A patrolman's pay during his first three years is $3,400 annually. Deductions for such things as pensions (some are paying as much as 23% of their salary into the pension fund), uniforms and even ammunition leave many a $3,400-a-year patrolman only $37.19 a week to take home. Since October, the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, which is not a union, has been asking the city to take a larger share of the pension load. It was pushing a bill which would save many patrolmen $220 to $290 a year. New York's Board of Estimate has been stalling. Last week, at the height of the Quill furor, the board dusted off the bill and recommended its adoption.

Mike Quill immediately grabbed that ball and ran. See, he said, how the mere threat of a union helps the policemen.

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