Towards an "Open Source Culture" in the U.S. Labor Movement

This has caused me to puzzle until my puzzler is sore. I've been in the labor movement for 16 years already; so I'm certainly no noob to labor politics. But I've never quite gotten why modern American labor media rarely rises above the level of a events newsletter or PR sheet - and why the advent of the web hasn't changed that fact overmuch. My basic understanding is that: a) different unions operate differently, b) there are varying levels of rough democracy in each union, c) there is almost always a strong tradition of formal democracy in most every union, and d) formal democracies don't often see the need for much interactive media.

Readers will certainly be curious what I mean by "rough democracy" and "formal democracy" and why I bring these terms up in this fashion; so let me tease these thoughts out a bit before continuing. To me, rough democracy is the basic idea that all people are equals and that there should be discussion and debate about most important matters of the day before decisions can be agreed upon for collective courses of action.

Formal democracy is the democracy of representative government and Robert's Rules of Order - in fact, Gen. Roberts created his Rules to bring order out of the chaos of the rough democracy of the Union Army during the Civil War (where it seems that, as the war progressed, soldiers had a habit of debating out political and even military courses of action in a similar fashion to early unions ... sometimes using their fists ... but at least they had serious debates).

Upon considering this it occurs to me that what I find confusing may actually be fairly simple. That is, I've been confused why so many unions are interested in running their new websites just like they run their traditional print newspapers and magazines. But as I think about it, their attitude seems to be an outgrowth of the formal democratic process that is present in most unions.

Getting to my point here, I believe all trade unionists can agree that there is a fairly serious effort on the part of most unions to democratically elect officers and other representatives to carry on their day-to-day affairs. There is also an effort made to run local meetings using some form of Robert's Rules, and run periodic national and international conventions the same way.

However, we might also agree that - in many unions - once officers are elected, little need is felt by leadership to do much more than report their activities to membership now and again - and sometimes mobilize membership to help win specific organizing and political goals. This has been the way many unions have done things for decades. And this problem is certainly a two-way street. Many rank-and-file union members don't show much inclination to participate in union activities or politics - even when actively encouraged to do so. (Although one might opine that the manner and seriousness with which union leadership encourage rank-and-file participation has a great deal of bearing on the outcome of such efforts.)

Contrast that to earlier periods in American unionism when my understanding is that there was often much more ongoing debate and discussion between members and leadership. Over time, this practice seems to have been jettisoned by many unions in the same way it is dropped by governments and other social institutions.

According to the famous German sociologist, Robert Michels, this change from rough democracy to formal democracy - although he did not speak of it in those terms - describes an "Iron Law of Oligarchy." Now I'm not trying to do an academic paper here; so I'll spare you all the details, but suffice to say the "Iron Law" says that new organizations like unions (or political parties) are often started in a very democratic way, and then, once successful, create bureaucracies to manage their institution and preserve it for the long-term. However, after some years, these bureaucracies tend to lose touch with the membership and prefer to run organizational affairs without consulting members in any serious way. And so the once-democratic organizations become oligarchies. Members may still get something out of such organizations, but have very little say in their future, and lose interest and loyalty. Eventually, these groups collapse due to having become functionally irrelevant to their members, and due to their inability to change with the times. Which one might certainly pin to their failure to dialogue with their own constituents about the future.

That is precisely what I don't think should happen with American unions. And I think that one great way to avoid that fate is for union leadership to use these new technologies to communicate interactively with their membership. To see what people are thinking. To have regular discussion and debate. To allow for candidates for union office to talk directly to members during election periods. To take what's best from the old union tradition of rough democracy and reinvent it for the modern era. To create what we might call an "open source culture" for unions - in the same way techies have been fighting to open up software code for use and modification by everyone. In the hopes that genuine, long-term discussion and debate between union members and union leadership might be just the thing to help unions become more responsive and more relevant. And that this in turn would help spark a period of reformation and renaissance for the labor movement.

So I encourage every union leader reading this piece to take a hard look at your union's website. Ask yourself if you are providing your members easy ways to interact with leadership, and if not, consider talking to your IT staff (or your pals here at Prometheus Labor Communications, if we're running your website) and seeing what can be done to open up more two-way communications on your website and in other media you may use. It may seem like a small thing, but I think you'll find this simple improvement to your communications strategy can have some very positive consequences for your union, and for the labor movement in general.

I'd really like to hear some back and forth on this post; so Communicate or Die viewers should by all means chime in now. Our lines our open.