Defending Public Employees' Right to
Unionize
The late Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not
their own facts.” Errantly assuming public employees have no
rights, a St. Augustine Record editorial November 18 stated that St.
Augustine Beach policemen – facing firing for Furst Anendment
protected activity – should never have made their concerns public
and have “no one to blame but themselves.”
Tell that to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., murdered by bigots for advancing civil rights.
Tell that to Saint Thomas More, beheaded by King Henry VIII for refusing to sign an oath against his conscious and religious scruples.
The police officers' First Amendment
rights are being violated. The Record should be defending them and
not attacking them, blaming the victims. This same “viewspaper”
prints anti-union right-wing columnists most days (including Ann
Coulter, who has bragged that her late father was the most successful
union-busting attorney in American history, winning a
“decertification petition” at Phelps-Dodge Copper in Arizona).
For years, unionized St. Augustine
Beach officers tried to negotiate a union contract. St. Augustine
Beach officials balked at the proposed grievance procedure in the
collective bargaining agreement. SAB insisted that officers'
grievance rights stop at the Chief of Police, inflicting a “chain
of command,” which despots everywhere throughout history have used
to suppress dissent.
The Record ignored these facts in its
reporting and editorializing.
The St. Augustine Record too often acts
like a “cognitive miser,” withholding material facts from its
news and opinion pages, while vastly shrinking the quantum of news
that was provided to readers only a dozen years ago when it was
(affectionately) called “the mullet wrapper.”
For its errant editorial, the St.
Augustine Record owes an apology to the officers and people of St.
Augustine Beach, whose rights are being violated by St. Augustine
Beach Mayor Gary Snodgrass, Vice Mayor Richard O'Brien and
Commissioner Andrea Samuels, who spouted animus toward the officers'
protected activity in voting to can them. The Record avoided quoting
the concerns of citizens about retaliation for free speech, omitting
them from its news stories and now from its opinon column.
In contrast, after the extremely close
November 6 Commission election, SAB Commissioners had a change of
heart, voting to let the new police chief decide.
The fascistic police-firing “Final
Solution” to a non-existent problem – First Amendment protected
activity was the reflexive retaliatory notion of St. Augustine Beach
Mayor Sherman Gary Snodgrass, former Excelon/Commonwealth
Edison/Philadelphia Electric nuclear powerplant utility Human
Resources czar. Snodgrass proposed “impact negotiations” to
resolve his retaliation. What nonsense.
At the November 12, 2012 SAB Commission
meeting, steam was nearly coming out of Snodgrass' ears, as the voice
of public opinion is finally being heard and heeded. Even Vice Mayor
Richard O'Brien campaigned on the basis that he supported the SAB
Police. The notion of firing ten policemen for First Amendment
protected activity is anathema and unAmerican. So did Mayor
Snodgrass have a meeting with the editorial board of the St.
Augustine Record, soliciting such an uninformed, unenlightened and
unAmerican editorial?
Thomas Jefferson said, "I have sworn upon the Altar of Almighty God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind."
Thomas Jefferson said, "I have sworn upon the Altar of Almighty God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind."
I support the St. Augustine Beach
Police. I support their right to unionize – three years without a
contract is too long. I support their right to criticize. There is
no requirement under our labor laws or our First Amendment to fit
inside authoritarians' cabined “chain of command,” a construct
ex-Chief Hedges tried to inflict of policemen concerned about his own
possible lawbreaking.
The late Attorney General Robert
Kennedy said, “It is not enough to allow dissent, we must demand
it, for there is much to dissent from.”
St. Augustine Beach officials must end
their retaliatory threats. As we prepare to celebrate the 500th
anniversary of Spanish Florida (2013), we do not need a national
police and union tourism boycott because of SAB's anti-union animus.
Our First Amendment, in its majesty,
protects the rights of St. Augustine Beach officers. It also
protects the right of the Record to be wrong.
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