SOLIDARITY FOREVER? MY TUCKUS!!!

“Solidarity forever” is one of the great labor songs. It praises unions for uniting all their members together as equals—the ultimate democracies and the polar opposite of top-down corporate control systems. It is also a PR scam.  Why? Because the typical union works very hard to keep members divided, marginalized and out of the information loop.  It is not hard to do or to miss it being done to you.  For example, … 

the average union has a bundle of different bargaining units and one or even dozens of locals in each unit. Under law and most union constitutions any member can run for national office and most often the officers of each union have the right to vote on what changes should be made to the union constitution and bylaws when they hold conventions.

So, assume you are just a dues paying member or even the president of a local and you want to run for national office. You know you are going to need to not just contact the voters, but, if possible, form a relationship with them. Moreover, you know that will require not just a one-time one-way communication to them, but a long-term, two-way information interaction. (Notice I did not limit that to mailings.) That is how serious campaigns are run by non-incumbents.

Fortunately,  the cyber age has made that easy and cheap to do so long as you know the name of every local union president, their telephone number, and email address. But the typical, average, usual, run of the mill, everyday union keeps that information under lock and key, available to incumbents and friends or staff of the incumbents.  Ask yourself this.  Does your union give every local president the name, telephone number and e-mail address of every other local president?  If not, you are face-to-face with a system designed to grossly favor incumbents by dividing, marginalizing and info starving union members and local officers.

Let me put it another way.  Does your union’s system provide that if you declared for national office that it will mail one written statement from you to all local presidents but only during the weeks just before the election? If so, you are again face-to-face with a system designed to favor incumbents by dividing, marginalizing and info starving union members and local officers.

Can you imagine if we limited candidates for the American Presidency or any other federal office to just one mailing to voters whose identity is kept secret from them? Can you imagine if we prohibited political messaging on our various public media mechanisms? Can you imagine if candidates could not poll voters long before an election to gauge what is important to them? If you are having trouble doing so, check out Iran, North Korea, Russia and a dozen other political systems.

It is time that unions updated their election systems, most of which were designed in the era of snail mail, dial telephones, and just three TV networks. Incumbents have a huge advantage over challengers because they not only know the name, telephone number and email address of every local union president, but they can use union funds to get out on the road to meet with them, form relationships, do favors for them, and button-hole them for support on important votes. Giving local union presidents the information they need to run a modern election (or just to engage in on-going political discussions with one another over issues) is essential if unions want to continue to claim that they are open, democratic organizations where everyone is equal and forever in solidarity with one another.

Some unions do this today.  Check out this site.  I could send you a dozen more, but this should make the point that it is not only more democratic to do it this way, but cheaper than the current system of snail mailing one paper communication to all voters.

If you have not heard the song Solidarity Forever, check it out here.