My apologies, but i will speak from the perspective of what is happening in the USA (though i strongly believe Canada is following much closer than most would admit).

Labor reform has been bantered about for near on 50 years. There has been a steady stream of ideas about what is wrong with organized labor since the late 60's. As the percentages of unionized workers has dropped, their argumements have become far more legitimate; unfortunately those in power have always dismissed them as "the rantings of educators who didn't know what it was like in the trenches."

To help fuel the discussion, let me take a couple of the cuts from the above mentioned thread and use it as an introduction:

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You know, if I actually thought you had ever come within a country mile of a union meeting, or even if I just thought you were speaking out of some deeply felt conviction about union reform, I would tolerate your provocative comments and engage you in discussion on this issue.

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The fact is unions are cooperative associations of workers that in fact belong collectively to their members. They hold regular membership meetings, conventions, conferences, shop floor sessions, etc., and elect all of their leadership positions via some form of democratic process.

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The arguments of top down unionism have been raging for years. The phrase business unionism is worn and tired and i have little interest in debating it as a vaild euphonism. Having lived it, my perspectives are simply that; my beliefs based on what i saw.

That said, there is something happening within labor that is troubling (moreso than what we have watched for the past forty plus years). There is a move afoot that fits well into Chris's concerns over whether labor is becoming more worker friendly or less.

I have long held the structure of todays unions are more about their own survival than that of the memmber/worker. Worse yet, in those with less than honorable leadership, the membership becomes a distant third to the wants and needs of those in control.

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If someone is unhappy with how a particular leadership run a union you are in, then get together with other union members, start a campaign and vote them out. It happens all the time in labour unions.

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If there is an interest in this topic, i will provide links to entire discussions over what is happening within the ufcw in California and the mergers and schemes to avoid officers facing contests. I suspect the debates are better served by talking about the bigger picture than individual cases.

One only has to look at the ctw's chief architect. Andy Stern's view of larger unions was never in question. His consolidations of SEIU locals has been well documented. There are numerous others within CTW who have changed their constitutions to make them less democratic. Stern's chief supporters have argued democracy isn't a necessity given the sorry state of labor.

That said, is the move to what i call the corporatization of labor a good thing for workers? Is the direction to total top down control the ultimate solution to the problems workers face? Are those of us who have witnessed the failings of organized labor over the past twenty years willing to trust in a system where those who already have it all take more control?

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Originally posted by Bill Pearson:
My apologies, but i will speak from the perspective of what is happening in the USA.

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I want to make a small contribution to this discussion, although you and I are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of experience with the functioning of trade unions. Before becoming a union member I had almost three decades working in non-unionized environments – mostly large corporations (where however one sees many of the same problems).

My circumstances have forced me to follow a very different path from yours, which I believe will turn out to be a productive one. I intend to share online what will be happening now that I have actually initiated the lawsuit I had been planning. The dispute with my employer, and then with the union, is merely background to this case. I am suing the government for its key role in deliberately engineering and sustaining corruption.

How unions actually function today, how they functioned in the past, and the reasons for whatever changes have taken place are the subjects of a huge discussion. From my perspective, the problems appear to be essentially those that beset all institutions, and a good starting point might be to try to understand what we mean by that term.

I suggested earlier that all institutions are abstractions: that is, figments of our collective imaginations. If that is so, why are they so difficult to reform? What is it that constrains us from applying our imaginations?

I think the answer may lie in the nature of power and how the power assumed and created by all institutions manifests itself, both internally and externally. Our entire civilization is run by powerful institutions. They make accommodations with each other. These become very complex relationships. If we want to make progress with reforming any one of these institutions we have to identify and deal with those relationships.

To use a useful metaphor I think one has to find one or more key points where the defenses of the entire citadel can be most easily breached. The walls are very high, and very heavy. But the foundations are old, and under the weight they are disintegrating. I believe those foundations are our legal systems, that I have learned from experience are run by and for the benefit of society’s most powerful and conservative element: the judicial / quasi-judicial / legal establishment.

I do believe what you experienced isn't a unique or unrelated event. Unions have become more institutionalized and less willing to fight. Collecting dues has become far more their focal point (fighting words and surely intended to spur the conversation).

Since i retired i have taken the internet opportunity to stick this message in their face and challenge them to respond. Like you, i want the debate in a public forum with absolute tranparency. I want the leadership held accountable for their actions.

Business unionism has long been about acting under a cloak of secrecy. Controlling the message and shaping the spin has resulted in members often being left in the dark. Members have had to make decisions when they have only half the story. It was one of the aspects of my job i hated and worked my butt off to change.

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Before becoming a union member I had almost three decades working in non-unionized environments – mostly large corporations (where however one sees many of the same problems).

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To this day i believe unions can and should be a workers best friend. Unfortunately i see them moving in the other direction. I see leadership making decisions that are in the best interest of the organization and the really shitty ones are nothing more than self-serving hogs at the trough.

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I suggested earlier that all institutions are abstractions: that is, figments of our collective imaginations. If that is so, why are they so difficult to reform? What is it that constrains us from applying our imaginations?

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Don't hold your breath on that happening. Virtually every time one of the good old boys retires, they are heaped on with accolades, applause and gifts. It doesn't matter if they did good or bad, the end product is one where they are legends in their own mind.

The best example i can give is when Doug Dority retired. As president of the ufcw international union, he walked away with a half a million dollar plus bonus and a pension in excess of $170,000 a year. His retirement came two months after the failed grocery strike in Southern CA. The one where some 50,000 workers were starved into taking a crappy settlement; where some lost their homes and left in financial ruin.

If this was an isolated incident i could forgive and forget it. Unfortunately the story is repeated over and over again. All across organized labor leaders are feasting while workers are starving.

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I think the answer may lie in the nature of power and how the power assumed and created by all institutions manifests itself, both internally and externally. Our entire civilization is run by powerful institutions. They make accommodations with each other. These become very complex relationships. If we want to make progress with reforming any one of these institutions we have to identify and deal with those relationships.

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In California, ufcw members are meeting with the Dept of Justice (DOJ) and the Dept of Labor (DOL). They have documented labor law violations and it will be curious to see if they act on them. In Ontario the CCWIPP is under investigation. The fact is, the internet has changed the entire concept of power...and it scares the establishment to death.

I do agree Chris, we are rocking the very foundations of these organizations. While some say it is wrong and that we are trying to destroy unions; nothing could be further from the truth. It is time they become worker friendly. It is time the power and decision making be shared, not hoarded.

In my humble opinion Stern's quest for the corporatization of labor is 100% in the wrong direction. It is an effort that has failed in the past and all it will do is delay the inevitable. The good news is it has the potential to keep those having it all to insure they continue to get theirs.

[ 06 January 2007: Message edited by: Bill Pearson ]

On the other hand I now believe that truly conspiratorial behaviour is more common than most of us are prepared to accept.

The people with whom I have been doing battle for the last few years are the members of the legal community, who are probably being quite well paid, either out of union dues or taxes. It is these people with whom I have had to deal directly. The union officials and their employer (and then also government) counterparts who signed off on the legal expenses evidently left all the decisions to the lawyers.

I’ve been dealing with the same bunch of lawyers all along, and the last time we were in court it was readily apparent that the animosity was mutual. Not surprising I suppose, because I was making the argument that they were all engaged in an ongoing abuse of process. When the judge entered the court his first words were that I should not bother attending court on the second day if I was not wearing a tie. This was delivered in a very arrogant tone. I was quite conservatively dressed with a dark jacket and white shirt, but had not bothered to put on a tie.

I said nothing in response, but I subsequently verified that judges have no right to dictate dress code to self-represented litigants. Before the hearing got much further the judge issued an oral finding (it never appeared in the written judgement) that my first argument, which was regarding the union’s standing, had been delivered “in bad faith”. The entire three-day hearing went on in that fashion. I was later instructed by the judge to go to the courthouse library and look up “res judicata” (Latin for “your goose is cooked already”). For three days the lawyers for the other parties were able to sit back and watch the judge beat me up.

In retrospect, had I been prepared for his initial verbal assault, I likely would have immediately demanded an apology or that he remove himself from the case. Had he refused to do either I would then have walked out and demanded from the Chief Justice a new judge. Nothing would have been lost because the outcome was already determined before we went into court. I have since been told by other people that sometimes the judges are hand-picked for these cases, and now I am inclined to believe that.

Obviously I’ve developed some very strong opinions about the legal profession. Yet, I’m prepared to concede that even lawyers are trapped within their culture. They are doing what is expected of them, and to do differently would probably severely impact their careers. The question then is when and how is accountability engaged?

Well, I’ve reached a conclusion about that question with respect to my own case. My position is that there is no excuse for the behaviour I have endured at the hands of the judges. In addition to very generous remuneration, they enjoy virtually complete immunity and lifetime tenure. They cannot be removed from office. The theory is this ensures they are “independent”; that they cannot be enticed to make judgements based on political considerations, and so will impartially deliberate on the facts and the law.

Nice theory. But it’s a crock. And I have some very powerful material to back that opinion up. Which is what I will be using when we get back in court.

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Well, I’ve reached a conclusion about that question with respect to my own case. My position is that there is no excuse for the behaviour I have endured at the hands of the judges. In addition to very generous remuneration, they enjoy virtually complete immunity and lifetime tenure. They cannot be removed from office. The theory is this ensures they are “independent”; that they cannot be enticed to make judgements based on political considerations, and so will impartially deliberate on the facts and the law.

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Interesting the correlation to many of todays labor leaders...feeling they are above it all. There are a bunch of them in the ufcw who feel they own their position for life. As the reform movement has grown in the US we have seem some of the most underhanded attempts to circumvent democracy and insure they maintain their huge salaries and lofty benefit packages without having to face government mandated elections.

Stern's theory of bigger unionism feeds into controlled structures where the heirarchy is the end all be all. They will most assuredly cater to those who want a piece of the action; especially attorneys, arbitrators, the investment community, the bureaucrats who oversee them and the politicians who want and need our people power and money.

Bill Pearson raises some interesting questions and concerns. I have been a labour activist all my life, have worked for unions and cooperatives (mostly organizing, communications and development) and have been elected to several boards and executives.

First, this:

I wrote in a different thread:

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The fact is unions are cooperative associations of workers that in fact belong collectively to their members. They hold regular membership meetings, conventions, conferences, shop floor sessions, etc., and elect all of their leadership positions via some form of democratic process.

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Pearson responded above:

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That is in fact what they were supposed to be, and for years i mouthed much those same sentiments. Unfortunately with the passage of time, i have found them becoming a whole different animal.

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This is not correct. Unions are by historic definition cooperative associations of workers who come together to address any variety of issues and interests and elect their leaders and officers via a democratic process. That's what they have always been going back to the secret trade and mutual benefit societies of the ancient world and guilds in the Middle Ages.

Historically they have been linked, because of this, to the cooperative movement and democratically self-governing autonomous townships, known as communes (where "communism" comes from) in Europe in the Middle Ages up until today in most parts of the world.

So unions are in fact this type of animal. The problem with much of the labour movement here in North America is not with the animal itself, but with how the animal has been conditioned.

Pearson mentions "top-down unionism" and the increased reliance over the years on professional strata and lawyers directly advising leaders who then often just get rubber-stamp approval from the membership.

This is a problem in most cooperative organizations (I was elected to the board of directors for my credit union for two terms. Very educational and eye-opening, but the legalistic and bureaucratic framework and mindset were very irritating).

But this isn't because of the unions or co-ops themselves. Rather, it's because, and let's face it; we don't live in a very democratic society. Rather, it's a corporate-dominated class based capitalistic economy, where top-down decision-making and exclusion and alienation of workers and the public is the norm.

That totalitarian mentality influences just about everything. It's no coincidence that the "top-down unionism" practice that is so prevalent in many labour groups (especially in the US) is also dominant in many political, cooperative, community-based, environmental, etc. organizations, and of course, governments.

The blind "follow-the-leader" attitude is one way corporate power structures keep workers, consumers and the public generally under their influence. We're taught this in school, through the media and in politics--respect authority--no matter how undemocratic it is--obey the boss, follow instructions.

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:

The blind "follow-the-leader" attitude is one way corporate power structures keep workers, consumers and the public generally under their influence. We're taught this in school, through the media and in politics--respect authority--no matter how undemocratic it is--obey the boss, follow instructions.

So that’s the problem. What can be done about this? More on that later.

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The two years I spent with CA were unprecedented for me, in several respects. The company was declaring revenues that it claimed were exceeded in the software industry only by Microsoft. Everyone in the industry in those days was already intoxicated by the high-tech boom, which would soon unleash the Internet. I had never seen money flow so easily (and with such lack of oversight). Many of us were traveling constantly and incurring large expenses, (dry-cleaning was the one item not allowed, which was ironic in view of the enormous bar bills that were never questioned).

I saw some other things that I realized were definitely questionable, and had I been more wise, would have made me very nervous. One, sitting on a dock just a few blocks from our office, was a large and expensive sailboat emblazoned with the name of one of our most expensive software products: “Top Secret” (a mainframe security package). It was apparently owned by a former salesman who had been hired by a very large customer, both of whom I later heard were facing legal proceedings.

This was in an era somewhat before all the Enron type scandals began to surface. One day just a few months after being hired I was in Dallas and found myself in an impromptu meeting of perhaps a dozen to twenty sales support techs like myself, who apparently had some issues with the company. Perched on the side of a desk in the middle of the room was a very slight fellow much younger than me, named Sanjay Kumar, who proceeded to ensure everyone, which included some people he evidently knew personally, that these issues would be addressed. He struck me as very bright, and very ambitious. Two years later, CA effectively closed the Vancouver office.

Soon after I began to hear stories about accounting issues that developed into an Enron type scenario at CA, and I was not at all surprised. One article I read more recently in a Canadian newspaper predicted that Sanjay was facing up to 90 years in jail. I now see he has been convicted and the sentence is only 12 years.

Do these cases say something about the issue of accountability? When did American corporate executives first start facing these kinds of sentences and what message is this supposed to be sending to the public? I wonder if part of the answer is just a confirmation of the notion that money is the measure of all things. The more money involved in the crime, the more years one must serve in jail?

To respond to the previous comment, I agree that we are trained to respect authority, but from at least the sixties we have also supposedly developed a tendency to question authority. Perhaps our failing is that we do not adequately apply ourselves to the task of asking what we mean by the term “authority”.

When I next go to court I will be directly challenging the legitimacy of the court itself, with reference to a notion called the “Rule of Law”, and backed up with at least one very scholarly treatise on that subject. Now that I have some understanding of what several hundred years of legal scholars have decided the term means, I am arguing that the authority the court must respect is the citizens who pay for the justice system and for whom justice is served only so long as the principles of the “Rule of Law” are respected.

As this treatise notes, we have a habit of confusing the office with the office-holder; the institution with the people who control it. They are not the same.

I am going to remind the judges that they tell us that ignorance of the law is no excuse and that no one is entitled to take the law into their own hands. What I have uncovered is irrefutable evidence that those who are empowered to administer and apply our laws have decided that they themselves are above the law.

Given the current state of society, it is my view that we should stop invoking the term democracy until we have put in place some means to effect personal accountability, which I say is an essential prerequisite. Perhaps we will find that democracy remains a mirage. If it can be attained it will only be through a system that looks very different from the kind of bureaucracies we have today - and I'm afraid that includes trade unions as much as government and corporations.

[ 07 January 2007: Message edited by: gbuddy ]

Unions are necessary, but they are only as effective as the membership. I think unions are an opiate of the masses myself. All workers should walk off the job in solidarity during a dispute, imo. The Yanks need to repeal the anti-worker Taft-Hartley Act. And Canada needs something like exists in Germany, the right to certify with only one or two hands in favour.

Unions are a natural worker response to harsh free market forces. The feds can sway the balance of power in favour of their rich corporate friends or the workers, but rarely is there a balance of power. Unions are an important opposition to fascism, and I re-worded this comment to avoid me the wrath of N. Beltov. The neo-Cons in the U.S. and our colonial administrators here share Trotskyism in common and believe in permanent revolution. They are moving swiftly in stripping us of the common good before they must acknowledge our calls for advanced democracy. I suppose I am a photo-negative of the neo-Cons in that I believe socialism has to be a dictatorship of the workers. Fascism and socialism are diametrically opposed, and never the twains shall meet. We have NAFTA, WTO and GATS to deal with, and now workers need similar international agreements and organizing in levelling the labour field.

[ 08 January 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

I see unions more of a phenomenon of large corporations. Large corporations have market power and unions have organized and captured this for the workers. However much of the economy is small business and most of the growth is in small business. They do not have much market power and the workers there live with the vagarcy of the market. Unionizing them is besides the point.

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Originally posted by Bill Pearson:

Stern's theory of bigger unionism feeds into controlled structures where the heirarchy is the end all be all. They will most assuredly cater to those who want a piece of the action; especially attorneys, arbitrators, the investment community, the bureaucrats who oversee them and the politicians who want and need our people power and money.

It is a system that perpetuates itself. If workers were doing well it would be one thing: The sad fact is workers are getting their asses handed to them and no one is stopping it. That should be the primary reason for a unions existence, but one would never know it based on outcomes in todays workplace and society as a whole.

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The fact is that we have seen and continue to see extraordinary advances on every technological front, and they are accelerating. Why are so few of us seeing any real benefit in terms of our day-to-day lives?

I suggest it is because people are being compelled to spend their working lives doing what are ultimately useless tasks (or even just killing time). I can attest to that personally from all the cubicle environments in which I have worked. The disgruntled workers I so often met as I moved from corporation to corporation were simply responding to the frustration of their largely pointless working lives. You can detect that same frustration in many of the posts on these web forums. The result also is that real net production (that is of truly valuable products and services that would among other things result in more leisure time) isn’t really improving.

[ 09 January 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

I live in Sask, and we are basically at full employmenmt - between our own modest gains and the workers we drained off to Alberta.

There seems to be a fair amount of money around, I don't remember ever really seeing Saskatchewan like this. So I think this is the time for unions to tip the scales a bit, as this balloon wil eventually deflate.