sometimes corrupt, excessively anti-competitive, or power-abusive.
Ie. same as the "capital" side of the equation. Turnaround is fair play if you ask me, given "labour" tends to be the primary victim when the latter slips its leash.
But with public sector unions, they're opposing government, which kind of represents the people, rather than opposing capital.
Police and prison guard unions don't seem to be in the net public interest.
Are we talking US context here? Because those would be basically irrelevant there (save for their members' collective professional interests natch, don't see why they shouldn't get to organise to promote those like everyone else) compared to the grossly dysfunctional mess that is the organisation of law enforcement in that country, and doubly so the utter counterproductive idiocy that is privatised prisons.
Yes, US, and I disagree with their being irrelevant. The police unions are a big part of why it's hard to bring the police in check, AIUI the guard unions lobby for longer prison terms. Both kinds of unions spent lots of money to defeat California's 2008 Prop 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_5
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peace_Officers_Association
"The CCPOA has supported campaigns for tougher criminal sentences, including large contributions to the 1994 campaign for Proposition 184, the 'three strikes' ballot initiative, which puts repeat offenders behind bars for lengthy terms. "
"CCPOA political activity routinely exceeds that of all other labor unions in California."
A quick search finds critical articles from both the left and right. A Reason article is critical of both private prisons and guard unions, but says the latter are bigger.