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You're not the governor's bitch. And you're not the union's bitch either.
You called this strike, you held the line, this is your fight and your decision. If you like the deal, then good. If you don't like the deal, then good.
But either way, it's your decision.
You're the one who's going to have to work the shifts, you're the one who's going to have to face your kids, you're the one who's got to decide.
No matter what the union says.
It wasn't there for you when you needed it, and it ought not to act like it has a say now. Your union has acted throughout this wildcat strike like it was a ventriloquist's dummy sitting on the governor's lap. I don't know who was pulling its strings, but it wasn't you.
It told you repeatedly that you should go back to work. It carried the governor's water, threatening to take away your health insurance if you didn't cave and give up your strike.
When you needed the union to have your back, it sat down with the governor's bought-and-paid-for mediator and sold you out. The union told you it had gotten the best deal there was to get. The union told you to vote for the appeasement it had signed off on.
That was a double cross.
And now that you have negotiated directly, now that some of you have talked to the commissioner yourselves, now that you have gotten a better deal, now that you have had a say in what's in the agreement, the union has its panties in a bunch and is telling you to crumple it up and throw it away.
And you can do that -- if that's what YOU want.
But you've just spent two weeks in the cold to show that you won't kiss the governor's ass, and you ought not now to kneel down and kiss the union's ass.
It sounds like the union has its nose out of joint -- that its ego is hurt -- by the fact that you have spent two weeks proving it is irrelevant, that it is an obstacle to your wishes, that it is in the governor's pocket.
And now, like a little kid dressed up in daddy's clothes, it is pretending that it has a say, that it can snap its fingers and you will jump.
But it's got things ass backwards. You don't work for the union, it works for you. And it having failed to serve you through this difficult stretch, it cannot now show up and declare that it is God almighty and you must stake your career and your family's financial fate on its dictate.
This settlement is none of the union's business.
It is the business of you, your family, your God and your brother and sister officers. That's the circle of trust on this deal. An honorable person could go either way. It's either a reasonable accommodation or it's not, and only you can decide that.
No matter how big a tantrum the union throws.
So God bless you as you decide. The people of New York will back you up either way.
But after you held the line this long, after you controlled your own fate over these long, courageous days of the strike, no damned Johnny Come Lately ought to wade in and tell you now how to think or what to do.
You defied the governor of the state of New York. That's an accomplishment. Don't spoil it now by kowtowing to some union that back stabbed you twice.
Your fate is in your owns hands. Keep it that way.
You're not the union's bitch.