Taking it to the streets
The demonstrators who lined Causeway Street this week have certainly made a statement, in a show of defiance that has already slowed preparations for the Democratic National Convention. If anyone doubted that unions can still put bodies on the streets, now they know better.
Yet this battle isn't about numbers. It's about two strong and stubborn personalities: Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Thomas Nee, the president of the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association. This became personal a long time ago.
Had Nee been available for comment, he would have likely disputed that. Yesterday, Menino himself was reluctant to personalize their fight, saying, "I saw Tommy Nee at an event the other day, and we had a very cordial conversation."
That's nice to hear, but it doesn't change the accumulated bad blood of recent years, exemplified by the heckling of Menino's family by the BPPA at the State of the City speech last year. As Menino's former friend City Councilor Jim Kelly could tell Nee, there is no faster way to escalate a feud with Menino than to drag his family into it. It doesn't help that Officer Thomas M. Menino Jr. has been pressured to toe the union line in opposition to his father. Menino publicly dismisses the use of his son as a pawn, but his friends say he seethes privately.
In theory, the two sides are not miles apart. BPPA officials have said they would be willing, as a base, to accept something on the order of the 11.9 percent raise over four years. That is what the city now has on the table.
The sticking point is 2002, a year in which teachers and firefighters got big raises, negotiated several years earlier, while the police did not. Partly because of that, police officers believe they have failed to keep pace with other unions, especially the firefighters. Because of that, the two sides are roughly 5 percent apart -- substantial, but hardly insurmountable.
"That year has to be dealt with," one union member outside the Fleet said on Tuesday. "You can't just make it go away, or pretend it doesn't exist."
The tough-talking Nee has never made any apologies for being a hard-nosed fighter for his membership, as a union president ought to be. But at this point, winning a contract seems less important than scoring points. Arbitration with a 12 percent raise as a starting point isn't a bad offer; the union so far considers it beneath discussion. Why?
Perhaps, as the BPPA is said to believe, they really are in a stronger bargaining position today than they were a week ago. But one official in another union, watching the scene unfold from a distance, wondered how long the BPPA can maintain the pressure and the support of other unions whose members are losing money every day that the work of converting the FleetCenter into a convention hall goes undone.
Even some BPPA members believe Menino may only dig his heels in deeper in light of the protests, faced with the effort to derail what is supposed to be a moment of personal national triumph.
While pressure may be mounting on Menino, it is on the BPPA as well, which is running out of cards to play. DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe can fret and fume, but in the end there's not a lot he can do about this. What's his option? Move the convention? Ultimately, only two people are key to reaching an agreement.
So, this has become a classic Boston political story, driven by equal parts principle and resentment. The spirit of negotiation is supposed to be compromise, but this is now about who will blink. Menino knows he will eventually have to reach a settlement with the union. Nee knows that the leverage afforded by the convention will eventually evaporate.
But for now, the demonstrators are proxies in a war with no victors and one obvious loser: Boston.
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.
