Critics of police unions provide a litany of anecdotal examples of the unions defending abusive, racist, and deadly officer behavior by bad actors who are far outnumbered by more caring and ethical colleagues. Former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin, for example, was defended by his union through misconduct claims that should have cost him his badge long before he knelt on George Floyd’s neck.
The killing of Floyd has awakened what might be the first domestic union-critical campaign from the Left since the labor movement went mainstream in the 1930s. Yet in exposing police unions, activists risk inadvertently awakening the public to similar behavior by union leaders representing a variety of professions and trades — and right at a moment when teachers unions are stymieing not only attempts to reopen public schools but using their influence to clamp down on any and all student education until they deem the environment safe enough for their clients.
“Suddenly, the Left is actively holding police unions accountable by stripping them of their power,” said Aaron Withe, national director of the Freedom Foundation public policy institute. “If they want to go down this road, and maintain any credibility, they will have to go full bore and apply the same standard for every employee union.”
Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers concurs, explaining the political ramifications of taking on police unions.
“As people demand to know what stands in the way of quick and efficient handling of police misconduct, they’re finding out it is employee unions,” said the former attorney general and corrections director of Colorado. “This will be a problem for a lot of big-city mayors who have been living for years on the contributions of public sector unions.”
Suthers said public sector employee unions burden the public every day by protecting the jobs of low-performance employees. A few incompetent paramedics can cost people their lives. A low-performance fourth-grade teacher can harm the futures of hundreds of students, Suthers said, “at a critical stage of transition in their lives.”
“Collective bargaining contracts make it nearly impossible to get rid of the bad or low-performance employee, whether it is an egregious case of misconduct or just sustained poor performance,” said Suthers, who successfully fought against his fire department’s campaign to unionize in 2019 in the country’s 39th-largest city. “I don’t care what area of government you’re talking about, you have to remediate problems with bad employees, and if that doesn’t work, you have to get rid of them. The unions prevent employers from doing that.”
It’s an emerging consensus across party lines.
“Police unions have helped shield officers from accountability,” says a CNN headline.
“White US police union bosses protect officers accused of racism,” declares a headline in the Guardian.
“How police unions enable and conceal abuses of power,” says a New Yorker headline.
The New York Times, the Washington Post, and other major newspapers, along with most cable and broadcast networks, have run with stories, editorials, and op-eds that quote experts documenting how police unions defend the jobs of officers known for abusive tactics.
“Like other such police agreements, the one in Minneapolis gives cops extraordinary protection from discipline for violent conduct. It mandates a 48-hour waiting period before any officer accused of such conduct can be interviewed, a common delay and a luxury not afforded even to criminal suspects and one that allows officers time to develop a strategy to avoid accountability,” explains a USA Today article, adding: “Like many police contracts, including those in Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., the Minneapolis agreement also requires the expungement of police disciplinary records after a certain amount of time.”
Other professions get less public scrutiny than law enforcement because the work takes place inside four walls or elicits less public intrigue. But the power of union-bargained contracts predominates across industries.
After suffering years of abuse by a high school teacher, author and child advocate Joelle Casteix blames a union contract for protecting the abuser from consequences later in his life.
“There are very good, wonderful teachers out there,” said Casteix, of Orange County, California, who formerly taught high school English in Colorado. “What I’ve seen from unions is an attempt to protect bad apples. Even in my own case, from when I was younger, the union protected a man who sexually abused me.”
The teacher left the school and became a full professor and department chair at a college out of state. Casteix told college administrators they had a sexual predator on their faculty. She presented documents, which she discovered in a lawsuit against the abuser, in which the man confessed to molesting her and another teenager.
Yet it was only after the #MeToo movement gained momentum that anyone at the college responded to Casteix’s complaints. Casteix sent letters about her ordeal to students and faculty. The professor soon resigned for what the administration called “personal reasons.”
“I found out they could not fire him all of that time, no matter what they knew about him, because of his union protections at the university,” Casteix said.
That was confirmed by a 2018 article in the Toledo Blade of Ohio, which explained how Adrian officials “confirmed” the abuse but “argued they could take no action,” in part because he was a member of the college union.
As a survivor of abuse, Casteix watches the National Education Association and its state and regional affiliates like a hawk. She has seen her home state’s California Education Association routinely fight to strengthen state laws that protect public school teachers accused of sexually abusing children.
“They are able to get politicians to do their bidding because of the donations the union makes to them,” Casteix said. “What they are doing is protecting men and women who hurt kids. Something needs to change.”
Calls to three union offices were not returned for this article, but past union statements have stressed the need to protect the due process rights of teachers and other school employees who might be falsely accused.
Casteix has seen the union lobby for legislation to seal personnel records of teachers in multiple states. As such, principals hiring new teachers don’t know about applicants with allegations and/or findings of misconduct against students.
None of this is new. In 2007, 13 years ago, the Associated Press published a three-part series about sexual abuse in public schools and the practice of moving abusers from one school to the next. It resulted from a yearlong investigation. Only a handful of Associated Press clients published the stories.
“Students in America’s schools are groped. They’re raped. They’re pursued, seduced and think they’re in love,” the first story explained.
The series told of the National Education Association’s entrenched resistance to holding abusers accountable.
“Pass the trash” has become a phrase common among educators when discussing what National Public Radio calls a cycle of “abuse, dismissal, rehire and abuse again.”
To combat this, the New Jersey Legislature enacted a “pass the trash” bill in 2018 that required all schools to “review employment history of prospective employees who will have regular contact with students.” The law requires applicants to disclose in writing past sexual abuse investigations focusing on them. It requires an assortment of other measures intended to screen out abusers.
The New Jersey Education Association declined to support the bill, citing concerns about due process rights of teachers accused of abuse.
The Texas Legislature passed a law in 2017 creating felony penalties for school employees who fail to report sexual abuse. The state’s largest teachers union objected to a stipulation in the bill that curbed retirement benefits for teachers convicted of sex crimes.
The Portland Association of Teachers in Oregon protected teacher-coach Mitchell Whitehurst through three decades of what the school system considered sexually abusive behavior involving multiple students. An investigative report by the Oregonian documented how Portland public schools ignored sexual abuse complaints against Whitehurst that spanned his 32-year career with the district. A 2017 district investigation confirmed the newspaper’s claims.
As the Oregonian reported, the district’s investigation determined “employees were hampered” in addressing the complaints “by a district practice that prevents a clear picture of a problem educator. … The teachers union contract mandates frequent purging of files and this helped abuse persist.”
“The investigators found principals and other administrators generally avoided disciplining teachers and other union members in the absence of clear-cut evidence of wrongdoing because of concerns the teachers union would make it too drawn out and difficult,” the outlet reported. “That reluctance was particularly acute when it came to alleged sexual misconduct.”
Portland Association of Teachers President Suzanne Cohen told the Oregonian she would never offer a comment or grant an interview about complaints of the union protecting Whitehurst or other abusers.
Colorado investigative reporter Chris Osher, who works for the Gazette, in 2018 documented rampant disregard for a state law that requires teachers and other school employees to report to authorities any suspicion of sexual abuse of a child. In one case, two Cherry Creek School District administrators faced charges for failing to report knowledge of a middle school teacher who had sex with girls and was charged with five counts of rape.
District lawyers and the teachers union used the state’s 18-month statute of limitations to clear the administrators. When Democratic state Sen. Rhonda Fields tried to extend the statute to five years, the Colorado Education Association successfully lobbied to kill the proposal.
Casteix calls it a typical play that exposes a lack of concern by union leaders for people abused by their members. Withe agrees.
“The union will protect any bad employee because it’s in their financial interest to do so,” said Withe, of the Freedom Foundation.
Though it gets little attention in the mainstream national press, sexual abuse in public schools is on the rise. The National Center for Education Statistics found 5.2% of children surveyed reported at least one incident of school-related sexual assault other than rape in 2017-2018. That’s up from 3.4% in 2015-2016.
Union protection of bad and harmful employees does not begin and end with schools or law enforcement agencies. Furthermore, bad employees are not always racists, rapists, and killers. Most are merely underperformers with unremarkable stories. If they work in food service, they might shortcut health regulations and jeopardize customers. A poor construction worker might pound nails too slowly, transferring disproportionate responsibility to co-workers.
Regardless of the industry or performance issue, union bosses prevent employers from weeding out the worst and rewarding the best with merit-based pay increases.
The president of the Omaha (Nebraska) Firefighters Union, Steve LeClair, pleaded “no contest” to assaulting a black woman at a bar in 2019. She claimed he sexually propositioned her and used racially insulting language. The city fired LeClair, only to see the union he presided over crusade for his reinstatement. The union cited job security provided by LeClair’s union membership. LeClair reclaimed his job after arbitration.
“The leaders and members of Local 385 are pleased with the results of the arbitration, which has reinstated Steve LeClair as a firefighter and will allow him to resume his career on the Omaha Fire Department,” said a union statement. “We look forward to moving on from this unfortunate incident.”
The ruling infuriated Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert, who considered the offense considerably worse than an “unfortunate incident.”
“Chief Olsen and I vehemently disagree with the decision,” the mayor wrote. “I support Chief Olsen’s decision not to allow this atrocious behavior from an employee sworn to protect the public. … Racial and physical abuse by city employees will not be tolerated. This type of violent conduct against women will always be dealt with in the same manner, with severe consequences.”
None of it surprises Casteix. She believes unions are about the dues-paying members, no matter what they do to anyone else.
Casteix wants state and federal laws, such as those passed in New Jersey and Texas, to protect children from predators by requiring open access to teacher personnel files and additional public transparency, plus protections for school administrators who fire employees facing credible or proven charges of abuse.
A recurring congressional proposal for union reforms, known as the Employee Rights Act, would prohibit labor union leaders from interfering with employees trying to create competing unions to represent them. It would require recurring employee recertification of unions, making them more accountable to the interests of all members.
“The unions say it’s all about education,” Casteix said. Or, serving food, fighting fires, or protecting the public from crime.
“To a lot of employees, probably most, it is about doing the right thing. But to the union leaders, it’s not about that. It’s about getting paid to take a bad apple, shine it up, and serve it to the community.”
Wayne Laugesen is editor of the Gazette’s editorial pages.
