[ColdNoMore]

Originally Posted by BlackhawksFan

I was a member of a municipal firefighters union. The biggest problem is that the union, whether they like the person or not, agree or disagree with their actions, is charged with protecting each member equally. Ironic huh?

I know in my union we had several cases that led to terminations that the union got overturned, some extremely reluctantly, due to ineptness of city and department leadership to properly document facts and/or follow the progressive discipline plan laid out in the contract.

If you look at the employment backgrounds of these officers committing these crimes you see time and again, Officer X has 6 complaints of excessive force in X years, Officer Y has 8, etc. These guys get away with this because of administration issues and attorney's who are good at finding loopholes in the contract.

They continue to commit theses heinous, racist, deadly acts because they feel empowered to do so. Until cities and the unions get on board together to get rid of the bad officers and poor leadership this will continue to happen.

I even started this thread, to bring much of what you say to light.

Police Unions (poke here)

Your point about management often being lazy...is also dead on.

I managed more than a dozen non-union supervisors, of whom some became mad at me...because I wouldn't back their emotional/knee-jerk termination of someone.

When I brought the supervisor in to discuss, they would usually start talking about all of the things that the employee had done previously...which SHOULD/COULD have justified their termination.

The only problem?

The supervisor had been too lazy, to properly document all of the incidents and thereby create a 'trail' of progressive discipline...which was required by the CBA before termination.

And yet, they wanted to blame me...for not standing by their decision(s)?

To be honest, on the flip side, some of the actions my supervisors made or the actions they took...actually showed why a union was needed.

Of course, they didn't enjoy the same protection, when I had no choice but to discipline them.