Deregulating Union Democracy
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Description
"No King is as safe in office as a Trade Union Official;" so quipped George Bernard Shaw in a 1930 play The Apple Cart. After 40 years of federal guarantees of union democracy under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA or Landrum-Griffin Act),I we are no closer to the democratic ideal of active membership involvement and contested elections, let alone two-party systems. Without gainsaying that some improvements may have occurred in some places, I believe it is time to reassess the entire system of regulation of internal union affairs. The argument of this paper is that union democracy regulation is both ineffectual and counterproductive, and we should move to a system where the law is indifferent to the form the bargaining agent takes—whether it be democratic or autocratic, nonprofit or for-profit—as long as employees in the bargaining unit have low-cost opportunities to cast secret ballot votes on the economic decisions of critical importance to them.
Source Publication
Global Competition and the American Employment Landscape: As We Enter the 21st Century: Proceedings of the New York University 52nd Annual Conference on Labor
Source Editors/Authors
Samuel Estreicher
Publication Date
2000
Recommended Citation
Estreicher, Samuel, "Deregulating Union Democracy" (2000). Faculty Chapters. 466.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/466
