> Union democracy issues are always complicated and anti-raiding provisions
> exist for some good reasons between unions. But on principle, why
> shouldn't locals be able to vote to secede and seek better representation
> with a different international? There might be good reason to prevent
> internationals giving incentives for such defections - such as jobs for
> local leaders as you mention - but assuming the union movement could
> police corrupt aspects of such transfers of allegiance, it does seem some
> more freedom to choose affiliation would increase democracy, since it
> would be the ultimate protest against lack of democracy.
This is true, but this would not do anything to prevent unions from raiding one another. Perhaps if the reforms you are talking about were combined with meaningful jurisdictional agreements we could make some progress. Of course, that would do nothing to promote union democracy if the union with jurisdiction were corrupt.
Even beyond corruption, a major problem we face today is the lack of jurisdictional agreements. I work for an industrial union of healthcare workers in Pennsylvania, and one of the biggest obstacles to achieving real power is that there are many other unions today organizing healthcare workers. While the UMWA and the Steelworkers may be excellent unions in terms of democracy, etc., what is their program for healthcare workers? How are we going to acheive a significant density in order to get the power we need to force changes if healthcare workers are split into six or seven unions? Here in PA, we have the UMWA, Steelworkers, PNA, PASNAP, AFSCME, HERE, and other SEIU locals (off the top of my head) organizing healthcare, and the only group we work with in terms of any coordinated bargaining, etc. are the other SEIU locals, and that is erratic at best.
I guess what I'm getting at is that I would be leary of pro-democracy reforms if they didn't address issues of the workers' power overall in their industry.
> Out in California, the clerical locals of the Univ of California had been
> part of AFSCME for years but felt excluded from any real power or
> democratic voice and eventually seceded into an independent union called
> CUE - largely because the AFL-CIO rules prohibited them from switching
> affiliations to another international.
>
> Should secession from an international have to mean secession from the
> AFL-CIO itself?
Well, I don't think it would be helpful if every local of any size could secede and affiliate directly w/the AFL-CIO, but as a weapon of last resort it could be a useful way of safeguarding union democracy.
Jeff