Federations and Fraternal Orders: The Place of Police Unions in the History of the Labor Movement

Aaron Bekemeyer, Doctoral Candidate, Harvard University

This talk will examine the case of Baltimore in the 1960s and ‘70s, where two unions (AFSCME and the Fraternal Order of Police) went head-to-head to represent the officers of the city police department. This history will shed light on the relationship between police unions and the labor movement as a whole and reveal the contested, contingent, dynamic nature of that relationship over time.