On Wed, 21 Jun 2000, Alex LoCascio wrote:
> Look, I have no doubt that a lot of unions are run by mobster types who have
> turned their union into a private fiefdom. I haven't encountered any, but
> I'm sure they exist.
> The main difference among unions these days, however, isn't one of "good"
> pwogwessive unions and "bad" reactionary ones. It's between unions which
> have a bureaucratic, top-down method of functioning while nonetheless
> speaking the language of militancy and unions which are democratically
> controlled from below by the membership. Jane Slaughter has a terrific term
> for the former: "militancy without democracy."
Alex, as someone who has written for LaborNotes a number of times, I have full agreement with Slaughter on the difference between militant democrat unions versus those that are not democratic. Most of the undemocratic unions are not bureaucratic but personalistic, and being personalistic is not the same as being mobbed up (that's a whole other category).
As I said, which you ignored, was that I said: "What is required for effective bureaucracy are effective democratic controls and the subordination of the bureaucracy to elected officials." Real bureaucracies actually prevent anti-democratic actions by leaders, since procedures and due process can be used to protect dissident members.
Which goes to the original point about A16, non-bureaucratic "consensus" tends to encourage homogenous personalistic control by an in-group. Bureaucracy actually creates an organizational apparatus with procedures apart from the interests of current leadership that can be used by those with opposing views to demand respons to their concerns. The rule of law is subverted every day, but any time anyone invokes "their rights", they are really invoking the procedures of bureaucracy in contesting the raw power of a majority or insular leadership.
It is just poor sociology to equate bureaucracy with antidemocratic leadership. The two are not the same and it is an intellectual mistake to make that equation.
> But the union did nothing to empower its
> membership in meaningful ways, beyond using them as cannon fodder on picket
> lines and organizing drives. The shop steward's only job is to pick up the
> phone and call the business agent, who will then take care of things. When
> contract negotiation time comes around, you have a small "rank-and-file
> advisory committee" whose job is to basically rubberstamp whatever
> management and the bureaucracy agree to
This does not sound like a "bureaucracy", which is usually defined as administrative division of labor, but rather centralization of control in a few hands, the antithesis of bureaucracy.
> The fact that you cite the early CIO as a "militant" organizing bureaucracy
> just proves my point. After initial militancy on the shopfloor, John L.
> Lewis and Philip Murray took over and told the workers not to worry their
> pretty little heads about it. When wildcats and quickies broke out on the
> shopfloor during WWII, union leaders were the most agressive strikebreakers
> around.
This is a different argument but since it's part of your ad hominen mixing of every political critique into a crtique of "bureaucracy" - which seems to be your catchall word for "I don't politically like it", I'll note some problems. Your history is really poor here. First, plent of the CIO unions were quite militant and democratic - the Steelworkers were not he only model - and secondly, the most enthusiastic strikebreakers were not the union leaders but the Communist Party - who thought union militancy should be subordinated to winning the war. A bunch of the more conservative union leaders actually undermined the credibility of CP-allied union leaders by tacitly and even actively supporting wildcats - the number of days lost to strikes by 1943 was phenomenal and largely had the sanction of union leaders, even if they might publicly swear otherwise for legal reasons. John Lewis of course didn't even pretend he wasn't encouraging the wildcats.
With Taft-Hartley, the attack of left-led unions and the remerger into the AFL, the CIO unions sunk into a whole range of antidemocratic practices.
> Dissent magazine and the social democratic ideas contained therein are
> rotting your brain, Nathan. Steve Fraser's biography of Sidney Hillman is
> superb history, but Fraser's views about union democracy are about as fucked
> up as one can get.
Again you mix democracy and bureaucracy as if they are the same concept. I disagree with Fraser's views - I cheer everyone time a rank-and-file caucus wins and think union democracy activism is a key part of the union struggle. But if I thought the LaborNotes folks goals were to dissolve all the staff functions and convert to consensual leadership, I'd oppose them as greater threats to democracy than those they were attacking. But luckily they are not. Teamsters for a Democratic Union, for example, spends most of its time trying to fund and build a parallel bureaucracy to strategically challenge conservatives throughout that union. Ken Paff's job is the result of arduous, even heroically struggled for bureaucracy - and thank god for that.
-- Nathan Newman