Photo Credit: Fox 5 Las Vegas

In 2023, dozens of culinary workers organized through Unite Here were arrested by Las Vegas police officers who unionized with the International Union of Police Associations, both AFL-CIO-affiliated unions.

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When you walk into the many union halls across Charlotte and the United States, one of the first things you’ll likely be confronted with is a sign or sticker that celebrates that union’s relationship with police. The very same police who would be called in to break a strike are commemorated as valuable members or friends of that union. 

Over the past decade, hundreds, if not more, thinkpieces have been released detailing the role that police unions and law enforcement associations play as the armed enforcers of the ruling class, in defense of murdering police officers,  protection of capital,  reinforcement of white supremacy, and the continued militarization of police. What few of these pieces acknowledge, however, is the role that the AFL-CIO and the establishment unions play in supporting law enforcement.

Almost every single one of the largest unions in the United States has law enforcement organized within its ranks. Fourteen AFL-CIO affiliated unions and the second largest non-AFL-CIO union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, represent law enforcement. In 2021, nearly a year after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police, the AFL-CIO put out a report titled “Public Safety Blueprint for Change” in which it defended the participation of law enforcement within unions, stating, “All workers, including law enforcement officers, are entitled to a union and the right to bargain collectively.”

This statement, which was written by a task force that included the International Union of Police Associations, of course, ignores the foundational contradiction that exists between law enforcement and the working class: that police are the armed enforcers of the state. They lie, murder, and imprison millions to serve the ruling class, with a particular emphasis on the oppression of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. All workers are exploited and oppressed by the ruling class. For the working class to put an end to its exploitation, it must overthrow the ruling class that the police are designed to protect, putting police and workers fundamentally at odds. In March, police in Chicago arrested eleven Starbucks workers and their supporters who were engaging in a sit-in as part of a campaign to get Starbucks to collectively bargain with them. In December, police broke a picket line and arrested seven Amazon workers on strike.

Police unions and associations play a fundamental role in supporting and protecting law enforcement. It is police unions who are often the first to defend police murders and abuses. On June 2nd, 2020, CMPD officers kettled hundreds of protesters and shot tear gas, flashbang grenades, and pepper balls into the crowd. Following this, a temporary restraining order was placed preventing the use of certain crowd control munitions for a month. Immediately afterward, the Charlotte Fraternal Order of Police put out a statement defending the kettling and gassing of protesters along with decrying the restraining order, stating it “eliminates the action CMPD to properly protect the property of citizens and businesses in Charlotte.” Police unions also pay off politicians who support measures to reinforce, fund, and strengthen the police’s ability to imprison and murder working-class people with near impunity. From 2012 to 2022, police unions spent over $100 million on lobbying and campaign donations.

The leadership of the establishment unions is aware of this, but continues to by and large support the continued membership of law enforcement in its unions and the affiliation of the International Union of Police Associations within the AFL-CIO.  It is reported in the aforementioned arrest of Starbucks workers in March, that it was SEIU leaders who called the police on their own members. In 2016, Philando Castile, a Teamster’s member, was murdered in a clear act of racial profiling during a traffic stop by Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez, who was a member of the Law Enforcement Labor Services union. Teamsters leadership refused to condemn the murder, and over the past decade has continued to build its police association, the Law Enforcement League. Castile’s own union local, Teamsters Local 320, displayed a law enforcement badge in a statement about his death and has continued to recruit police into its ranks.

The murder of Philando Castile by Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez is just one tragic example of the glaring contradictions that exist within the establishment unions. Since its earliest roots, the establishment labor movement has been a vehicle for white supremacy and national oppression. The Knights of Labor banned Chinese people from joining its ranks and, in the South, often segregated its locals. The unions of the AFL, where many of today’s unions originate, segregated and in many cases outright banned black workers from joining. Samuel Gompers, its first and to this day longest-serving leader, was a vehement racist; in one instance in 1905, threatening black workers with “a race hatred worse than any ever known,” and claimed black workers were tearing down all that the white man had built. This legacy continues in the AFL-CIO today; despite black workers having the highest unionization rate in the country, the overwhelming majority of union leaders are white men, often even in locals that consist of a majority of black workers. These leaders also do not represent the interests of their members; Black Americans are approximately three times more likely than white Americans to be killed by police. Yet as shown in this article and in other instances such as in 2014, when then AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka in a statement referred to the police officer who killed Michael Brown as “our brother,” these leaders continue to stand by police at the expense of their members’ interests.

The establishment union leadership refuses to break with law enforcement because they, like the police, play a fundamental role in reinforcing the rule of the ruling class. Over the past few decades, nearly every single president of every one of the largest unions in the United States has not spent more than a few years working in the sectors they supposedly represent, if at all. Current AFL-CIO president Liz Schuler is a career activist and, outside of a summer job in college, has never worked in any sector in which any of the AFL-CIO affiliated unions represent. The interests of the career activists, along with former lawyers, accountants, economists, and business administrators who lead the vast majority of unions today, are fundamentally not tied to the interests of the working class. This is why when union bureaucrats go to the negotiating table they are getting less for their members than ever before.

The answer, however, is not to merely purge the existing union leaders and vote in new ones. Since the 1940s, the US government has worked tirelessly to purge the labor movement of so-called “radicals” and de facto tie the establishment labor unions to its hip. No strike or walkout clauses are part of the contract agreements between corporations and the leadership of every union. Union stewards have been turned into shop police, more often enforcing contracts on their own rank and file than the company. The answer for workers is to build their own shop floor organizations, independent of sellouts within the establishment unions, and instead run by the workers themselves.

With the establishment labor movement glued at the hip with law enforcement, only through workers coming together and building up their own organizations can workers toss the pigs out and create a revolutionary labor movement.