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I'm quite a fan of the abstract idea of unions: typical corporate power structures are derived from the principle of 1 share = 1 vote[0], whereas unions provide

I'm quite a fan of the abstract idea of unions: typical corporate power structures are derived from the principle of 1 share = 1 vote[0], whereas unions provide a competing power structure derived from the principle of 1 employee = 1 vote. Many fear/detest unions for their past failures, but any organization can be poorly run or corrupt. If you believe in democracy then you should believe that a power structure derived from 1 person = 1 vote has the potential to be more fair and more just, for the represented individuals, than the alternative power structure derived from dollars. I would love to see more innovation in this space: How can we design better charters for unions (or governments, really) so that the resulting power structure better represents the people? Should there be some kind of justice system for large unions to ensure there is no corruption and that decisions are made fairly in the best interests of the constituents? Should we elect representatives based on say department as a re-creation of the principles of federalism, or should we be a direct democracy? At what level of scale do these decisions matter? Many people study democracy, but I fear not enough people study the ongoing process of creating effective and resilient new democracies from scratch. [0] Although, many modern tech companies have perverted this by creating separate ultra-powerful voting shares reserved for founders

cool_dude85 6y ago
Most unions I suspect already have some form of within-union democracy. The small union I'm a member of works on a sort of federation basis, broken up by physical location. So members of District 26 vote for a District 26 rep, who goes to a meeting of the union leadership and then votes there. In this way, representatives are not exclusively associated with job classifications (e.g., all the programmers vote for programmer reps, the accountants for accounting reps, etc.) but are instead only loosely associated with classification. So one rep mostly, but not exclusively, represents the accountants, but also might represent the secretary in the same office. I think it's an okay system, and I'm sure different intra-union democratic structures have been studied, but to an extent I think you have the same problems as with local elections: it's difficult to get people to be informed and care, absent some huge community-wide issue. What was the difference between Rep A and Rep B in the last election? Who knows?

cool_dude85 6y ago

Most unions I suspect already have some form of within-union democracy. The small union I'm a member of works on a sort of federation basis, broken up by physical location. So members of District 26 vote for a District 26 rep, who goes to a meeting of the union leadership and then votes there. In this way, representatives are not exclusively associated with job classifications (e.g., all the programmers vote for programmer reps, the accountants for accounting reps, etc.) but are instead only loosely associated with classification. So one rep mostly, but not exclusively, represents the accountants, but also might represent the secretary in the same office. I think it's an okay system, and I'm sure different intra-union democratic structures have been studied, but to an extent I think you have the same problems as with local elections: it's difficult to get people to be informed and care, absent some huge community-wide issue. What was the difference between Rep A and Rep B in the last election? Who knows?