The growth of large, urban law enforcement associations in San Antonio, El Paso, Fort Worth and Austin combined with membership gains in the Rio Grande Valley have turned 2012 into a surprising year of growth for CLEAT, especially in the final quarter. CLEAT actually saw individual membership gains in Houston and Dallas as
well as growth in other parts of the state.“A great deal of our growth comes from our reputation of excellence,” said Execu-tive Director John Burpo, “but part of our growth comes as a direct result of our being a real, in-your-face, never-back-down la-bor union. Officers don’t want to risk their careers by joining a management lapdog organization that is afraid to fight for their members in the courtroom, at the negotiat-ing table and in the Capitol.”

Regardless of all the external variables, CLEAT is continuing to grow in all areas of the state.  “This is good news as our entire orga-nization prepares to gear up for the retire-ment war in the Texas Capitol next month,” said Burpo “more members in more cities and counties means more political reach for our organization.”
CLEAT continues to buck national trends
of union membership loss due to bad eco-nomic times, cut backs in law enforcement
agencies and competition for members.

“CLEAT is the only statewide law en-forcement union in Texas with truthful accounting of our membership numbers,” said Burpo.  “The other guys have questionable membership accounting practices, they have some officers paying different dues structures and they count associate mem-bers and retirees. With CLEAT, there are
no voodoo numbers games. We don’t lie about our membership numbers. We are the largest law enforcement organization in the state and all our members pay the same dues, $30 per month. We are on the march to doubling our size in ten years and our short term goal is to hit 20,000 members in the next 18 months.”

"These are exciting times at CLEAT,” said Burpo, “we look forward to 2013 and beyond.”