If you want plebiscites down to the detail of investments by labor union funds, you are talking about voting every other day, since there are equally important decisions unions have to make on a daily basis.
And BTW, because of Taft-Hartley, such votes could only be advisory in any case, since trustees of pension funds are not directly beholden to union members, even though in practice they are usually the same leaders.
But this whole post was a jump from advocating plebiscites to frankly complaining that there were not votes on an issue where most of the membership would either not care much either way or would probably vote the same way as the union leadership, if most polls are accurate.
But local unions and central labor councils can and do promote resolutions on a range of issues that do get voted on by elected union leaders.
I'm curious, though, do you argue that every decision by every elected body is less legitimate than a referendum? That the votes by elected leaders in support of affirmative action in California were less legitimate than Prop 209 which banned the practice? Representative democracy is far more democratic, since it gives minority groups the ability to bargain in favor of the issues they care passionately about, a bargaining that is impossible in a single-issue referendum.
So it's not that I think that decisions by elected bodies of mass organizations and political bodies are just more practical than referendums; I think they are more democratic and better protect minority rights and voices.
Nathan Newman