Labor Union Democracy

Labor Democracy

Labor Unions a are combination of seemingly contradictory elements. On the one hand, labor unions are conceived of like an army with soldiers of labor winning battles in conflict with management. On the other hand, the membership looks upon them much like the high school debate team where everyone on the team expresses themselves. The leadership of the union many times feels like elected colonial militia officers with dozens or hundreds of soldiers whose loyalty he can not quite completely count upon and who may act like rank amateurs. In this short essay, the author will consider a case study in labor union democracy in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU).

Summary

In a Politics & Society article, Levi et al. Points out that in Europe, scholars are more concerned about deliberation and membership involvement. Alternately, American scholars focus on procedural democracy and participatory democracy providing a model of the federal government's electoral institutions.

The authors of the ILWU study are not satisfied with procedural democracy however and rely upon the analysis of rank-and-file member participation in order to ensure union leadership accountability to membership. In such situations, scholars find that oligarchy still persists. Participatory democracy also is possible where the rank and file are active and where there is a strong constitution insuring democratic involvement by lower levels (Levi, Olson, Agnone & Kelly, 2009, 205-206)

Rank and File Democracy in Practice-ILWU

Levi et. al. points out that nearly all labor scholars see the ILWU as a successful example of participatory democracy that is deviant in its survival since so many unions like it died out. Even more unique, since the 1934 strike, they have an almost total monopoly in the supply of labor for cargo handling in ports. This stability allows them the ability to retain the participatory democratic structure. Other sociological reasons are there as well, including procedural democratic elements mixed in with participatory democracy (ibid., 208-209). This blend of participatory and procedural elements explains the balance between democracy and ability to mobilize effectively to represent the membership (ibid., 222

Analysis

This author finds themselves largely in agreement with the analysis of Levi et. al. There is much that is unique about the ILWU, but its survival should be studied by scholars of labor organization. The analogy might be akin to abnormal psychology. Sometimes scholars can learn much more by examining the abnormal than the normal. In evolutionary science, many times mixing links, hybrids or surviving species provide a wealth of knowledge that could never be gotten by normal inquiry. Therefore, the ILWU is akin to such a biological example whereby unique environmental or genetic (in the case of the ILWU, sociological) characteristics have insured its survival. Transplantation of those "sociological genes" might provide unions with the stamina to survive in the rough world of globalization where workers have lost so much in terms of rights, wages and control over the means of production. Perhaps it is time for labor studies to perform a bit of this "sociological engineering" to return innovation and dynamism to the union movement.