Will State Police Be Next for Teamsters?

By Joe Davis

The Michigan State Police may be forbidden by law to join unions, but that isn't stopping Teamsters Local 214, the Detroit-based public employees union, from an all-out effort to bring the State Police into the fold.

In the next few days, Joe Valenti, President of Teamsters Local 214, will meet with Michigan State Civil Service Commission Personnel Director Richard Ross in hopes of getting State Police Command officers the right to unionize.

The meeting is bound to be a test of Teamsters clout. Valenti and his staff will be trying to succeed where State Police have repeatedly failed during the last five or six years.

Valenti's claim to represent the Michigan State Police Command Officers Association (MSPCOA) is based on an August 4 vote by the sergeants and lieutenants in that hitherto fraternal organization to seek affiliation with Local 214.

Like all other classified Michigan Civil Service employees, State Police officers are prohibited by the Public Employees Relations Act of 1965 from bargaining collectively, joining unions, or striking. No other state employees, except for those in state-run colleges and a handful of policy-making and elective positions, are exempted from this law.

Civil Service regulations may have been the proverbial immovable object until now; but the Teamsters' negotiating muscle, combined with the mounting nationwide trend toward more and stronger police unions, may well be an irresistible force.

Few politicians today will risk publicly opposing either the police or the Teamsters. The teaming up of these two powerful interest groups could turn into not only a political double-whammy, but a dangerous concentration of power.

One of the few to express doubts about such possibilities is State Representative Perry Bullard, an Ann Arbor Democrat.

"I favor collective bargaining rights for all employees except, possibly, police officers," Bullard told the SUN, "and I am a little skeptical of strikes by policemen, firefighters, and others who are concerned with maintaining the public safety on a day-to-day basis.

Bullard's qualms were amply substantiated by this summer's police strike, which paralyzed San Francisco. When the City Council there refused to give in to police demands, Mayor Joseph Alioto declared a state of emergency—under which he was empowered to override them. The San Francisco police won their demands by holding the gun of unchecked criminal activity to the city's head—a form of terrorism conceivably more dangerous than kidnapping, bombing, and hijacking.

The Michigan State Police, by most accounts (including their own), have some legitimate grievances. Detective Sergeant George Bays, President of the MSPCOA, points out that the salaries of state troopers have fallen steadily during recent years, compared with salaries for Michigan's local police officers. Between 1969 and 1975, Michigan State Police salaries have fallen from 6th to 65th place in rankings for all police agencies statewide.

Besides fairer salaries, Bays says, State Police command officers want what he calls the basic "constitutional right" of collectively negotiating a contract. They also want the power to bargain over "working conditions" among which they include residency restrictions; assignments and transfers to a locality; the content of their own qualifying examinations; overtime; and seniority. 

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The Michigan State Constitution of 1963, however, now gives final authority in these matters to the Civil Service Commission, administered by Personnel Director Ross, which is not expected to give up its authority to either police or Teamsters.

If they cannot win the authority to unionize in the first round, the command officers will be lobbying to submit to the voters an amendment to the constitution itself. The MSPCOA has had a part-time lobbyist pushing the amendment measure among legislators in Lansing since it was drawn up this May. It is similar to the better-known House Joint Resolution "X," which has been vociferously sponsored by the Michigan State Police Troopers Association and its executive secretary, Doil C. Brown. Although the MSPCOA is not yet affiliated—at least legally—with Local 214, they will apparently have full time Teamster lobbyist Otto Wendell working for them, too.

Having its cake and eating it, too, the MSPCOA is being fronted for in the Legislature and the Civil Service Commission by a union which cannot legally represent them. Police officers, as it usually turns out, get their cake no matter what. While the law usually forbids police strikes, even in localities where it allows police unions, hundreds of protesting officers have been known in several cities to call in with the "blue flu." In Boston this fall, police went so far as to use an overtime grievance as an excuse to stage a massive call-in while anti-busing rioters attacked school buses and black students.

The most that the laws allow police as a bargaining weapon is compulsory arbitration, which submits contract questions to a disinterested third party. Officially, at least, that is all Michigan State Police are asking for, and legislators may be inclined to grant it on the principle of "fairness." But the "blue flu" makes the wildcat strike an ever ready court of appeal.

It is no real mystery why command officers chose Teamsters Local 214, which already represents nearly 1,600 local police officers, sheriff's deputies, and airport security guards in some 81 Michigan bargaining units, as well as the lion's share of employees in Detroit's Department of Public Works. Teamsters have a reputation, deserved or not, for delivering the fattest contracts.

And Teamster members may well get the best deal—until the time comes to collect their pensions. The Teamsters' Central States Pension Fund is equally notorious for financially unsound, ethically questionable, or downright shady real estate investments. Even if they unionize, the state troopers could keep their current civil service pension fund. But this pension fund, plagued by cuts in state money, may not be in much better shape than the Teamsters'.

"Someone has to raise questions about the possible political use of police power," says Representative Bullard. "For example, what would happen if state troopers were called upon to keep the peace in an organizing dispute between the United Farm Workers and the Teamsters over migrant farm workers right here in Michigan. It is not good to put that possibility for conflict of interest within the reach of a profession whose highest duty should be the fair and impartial enforcement of the law."

Bullard is one of the few so far to raise questions about the law-enforcement officers' affiliation with a union involved in legally questionable activities. The Teamsters' history—from ex-President Jimmy Hoffa's earliest days to his probably murder this year—has been rife with serious allegations of organized crime connections.

During a recent $12 million lawsuit over charges of police brutality and racial insults against Blue Magic, a black Philadelphia-based band, by Ann Arbor Police, local elected officials complained about how police union contracts limited their access to police records which might clear up the facts of the case. The contracts limit public officials' power to govern police activities, in the interest of "job security" for officers.

In hard times, police "job security" like everyone else's—may be threatened by budget cuts and layoffs. It is far more difficult, however, for employers to fire police officers for misconduct on the job than to fire teachers, assembly-line workers, or over-the-road truckers.

A judge who has a personal or economic interest in a case automatically disqualifies himself. Representative Bullard argues that police should be held to similar standards of professional ethics.

The opportunities for conflict of interest in police work are neither rare nor imaginary. The State Police unionization fight raises the question of whether Teamster-organized state troopers could fairly enforce the law if, for example, truckers protesting fuel prices and speed limits were again to blockade interstate highways as they did in December 1973.

Jimmy Hoffa was fond of recalling that during the early struggle to organize the Teamsters, striking workers were routinely beaten up both by hired crime-syndicate thugs and by police strikebreakers. Hoffa's solution was to deal with his organized-crime enemies on their own terms—by either scaring them off with violence or buying them off with cash.

Would Jimmy smile—if he were alive to do so—to see the labor movement's other traditional enemies, the police, being organized by his own successors?

Joseph Davis is a free-lance writer who lives in Ann Arbor. He was formerly the workhorse reporter for Good Morning Michigan.