US police reform battle will go to local level

Significance Protesters nationwide are calling for police forces to be defunded or closed. Congress has struggled to pass remedial police reforms and can only legislate on federal police. Local-level police reforms are thus required, and this means tackling powerful police unions. Impacts Police unions will push back against reforms and cuts they perceive as harmful to their members. Congress will try to pass police reforms but is unlikely to reach agreement before November’s election. Issues transferred from police to social workers, such as drug misuse, could de facto become decriminalised. Some cuts to police budgets will be more cosmetic than real, achieved by cost-saving measures.

Blue Solidarity: Police Unions, Race and Authoritarian Populism in North America

With a focus on police unions in the United States and Canada, this article argues that the construction of ‘blue solidarity’, including through recent Blue Lives Matter campaigns, serves to repress racial justice movements that challenge police authority, acts as a counter to broader working class resistance to austerity and contributes to rising right-wing populism. Specifically, the article develops a case study analysis of Blue Lives Matter campaigns in North America to argue that police unions construct forms of ‘blue solidarity’ that produce divisions with other labour and social movements and contribute to a privileged status of their own members vis-a-vis the working class more generally. As part of this process, police unions support tactics that reproduce racialised ‘othering’ and that stigmatise and discriminate against racialised workers and communities. The article concludes by arguing that organised labour should maintain a critical distance from police unions.

POLICE AS WORKERS: Police labour rights in Southern Africa and beyond

Efforts by police organisations to unionise and to increase their social and labour rights is an international phenomenon, and one that is becoming more vigorous in the Southern African region. However, many governments are wary of police unions and limit their rights, or refuse to recognise them at all. This gave impetus to the formation of the International Council of Police Representative Associations (ICPRA), in September 2006. Two of ICPRA’s aims are to assist and advise police unions all over the world and to provide the international police union movement with a voice for influencing policing futures. In South Africa, the Police and Civil Rights Union (POPCRU) is assisting police in the subregion and has become a symbol of what is possible for police even in repressive states. In a rapidly changing police labour environment, police unions have the capacity to confront existing (undemocratic) occupational cultures, to promote organisational accord and to forge positive reform.