From time to time, I’ve raised, and commenters have opined about, the issue of union democracy. Everyone is for it–but it tends to get subsumed into very general broad statements that degenerate into black-and-white “down with the anti-democratic union leaders” versus “leadership must lead.”

So, an old friend of mine, Jane Slaughter and I have had a few discussions about this, recently and over the years. Jane has been a backbone of Labor Notes–I’m not always with the Labor Notes rhetoric (maybe because I’ve been one of those ossified union bureaucrats myself) but I do think there’s often useful points raised in Labor Notes views.

Labor Notes recently reissued Democracy Is Power and, though I do not generally want to start promoting every book that comes out, I thought it would be a good opportunity to share some of Jane’s thoughts on the subject–and get others to weigh in. Maybe we can try to get beyond the usual stuff. Jane writes:

“Embedded in the Big Debate this year, there’s been some back-and-forth on whether union democracy is important or even desirable. Mostly it’s been abstract and sometimes moralistic. I find it frustrating that so many people don’t seem to get the practical difference it makes to have an engaged membership.

The whole idea is not “what looks democratic on paper” but “what will make the union more powerful against the boss?” That latter idea is precisely what some theorists in some of the CTW unions have written or spoken about. They’ve argued, implicitly or explicitly, that what makes a union powerful is very smart officers and staffers carrying out a well-thought-out plan, with the members willing to be “mobilized” when called upon but not needing any say in the matter.

Doesn’t it seem obvious that a union is a lot more likely to act in the interests of members if those members control the union? The opposing view is to trust those smart staffers to always get it right, because they’re so smart.

It also seems obvious that a union run by the members—that is, with a healthy relationship and lots of back-and-forth between leaders and members–is more likely to actually use its power, rather than looking for “it’s just us two guys talking” kinds of deals with the boss. So those are two arguments for why democracy is vital if the union is going to try to have some power in the world.

But what is democracy? The way Labor Notes has written about it, we disentangle the notion of a “democratic culture” in a union from what most people think of as “democracy”—whether there are certain structures and procedures in place. The important thing is the relationship between leaders and members, which takes place in all kinds of ways—most importantly in the contract fight and at the workplace, secondarily at the union meeting. There aren’t hard-and-fast rules for which procedures are democratic and which aren’t, but the bottom line has to be what makes members more powerful.

For example, generally speaking, you’d think that a walk-in ballot at the union hall is the best way to conduct an officers election. Voting alone at home by mail ballot is non-collective, non-solidaristic. But there might be circumstances in which a mail ballot would be more empowering, such as “you’ll get beat up if you show your face at the union hall.” Or “the union hall is in another state.”

A democratic union figures out ways to make people actually want to come to the union meeting—and how to work around it when most people still don’t (hint: the union’s main job is to be at the workplace, not at the union hall).

This is not to romanticize members and demonize officers. Most people would rather have someone else do the hard work for them, in unions as in other areas of life. Members have to take responsibility for themselves. I’d never argue that the best model is “we’re all leaders here,” which translates to “the real decisions are made informally behind the scenes.” Instead we need to think about what makes a leader, about how far out front should leaders be, and about the relationship questions that it would be easier to dodge if we idealized “the rank and file.”

We’ve just reprinted our strategies manual Democracy Is Power because people are finding it remarkably relevant to today’s debates. The authors did a new 5-page introduction that gets specific about what happened in 2005 and some lessons from history. But the book is mostly practical stuff like suggested bylaws, how to run a membership meeting, how to function in the meeting from the floor, pros and cons of different election procedures, what to do after you get elected (e.g. making appointments, dealing with defeated opponents, hiring staff), inclusionary policies, getting members involved through networks. How to make democracy real, not abstract.

So, yes, I think democracy does equal power, and I think there are much more useful ways to talk about it than we’ve seen up to now—i.e., what should people actually be doing differently?”