zlacker

I don't understand how anyone is surprised; unions are doing their job, by extracting the maximum possible benefit for a plurality of their members. This is what unions do, and it just happens to be a very ugly benefit in this case.

Perhaps it is that many people assigned unions and government at-large the role of 'good guys', with corporations and criminals being the 'bad guys'?

In any case, most libertarians (such as myself) have been skeptical of the police and unions (especially public-sector) for a very long time. We've been talking about these issues for decades, and wondering why nobody else noticed what was going on with the militarization and lack of accountability of police. I suppose we finally have our answer.

>>nickff+(OP)
Surprise is different and separate for outrage, though they sometimes go by the same name. It may be that the unions are doing “their job,” but like all organizations in America, a police union has a social responsibility to not be evil, which it completely failed at.

>>nickff+(OP)
There are countries were unions are a healthy counter-balance to large corporations. Without them, it would be every employee against a big institute.

>>Fronzi+Tj
What large corporation is a public sector union counter-balancing?

>>ironma+mj
Well, you think that they are doing evil, but from the union's perspective, they need to choose whether to err on the side of under-protecting their members, or over-protecting them. The police unions (and most others) choose to over-protect their members.

>>nickff+dl
It looks like they might be overprotecting themselves out of their jobs, after building a 30-year case on video of their inability to self-regulate across dozens of cities.