It’s Already Starting…and There Are Still 48 Days To Go!
This morning I left the condo to find scores of protesters on the street near our building. They were the Boston policemen’s union protesting their unresolved contract negotiations. They chose to protest at the Democratic National Convention site since the location gets more media attention and prevents the union laborers from preparing the site for the convention in July.
Learning my lesson from yesterday, I was listening to Scissor Sisters* on my Discman. But the protests were so loud that I could still hear the testosterone fueled ranting over the disco-remake of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb”. What made it even more unsettling was that these were the policeman protesting. When other groups picket and “scabs” cross the line, the police usually assist in preventing violence from taking place.
If it’s the police doing the protesting…who’s going to protect? By assisting the scab, doesn’t an officer then cross the picket line himself and become a scab? There was brief coverage of this on the news this morning, but as I’ve discussed before, my mornings are too complicated with consuming oatmeal and fending off Dusty to pay much attention to the full news stories. Anyway, I recall hearing something about the policemen protesting because they weren’t satisfied with a negotiated 12% pay raise (note: Boston has the second highest paid police department in the country already).
Like I said, I don’t know the whole story: if this is 12% over 3 years I would consider it adequate in the current economy (though not stellar). If it’s 12% in one year, I’m going to be pissed. I’d KILL for a raise like that.
And now might be the time to do just that since the officers are all too busy picketing.
*Buy this album already, dammit!
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Ironic that you yelled at me when I purchased that CD — and now you want the world to buy it. Hmmmmm…