Democratic dilemmas: union democracy and union renewal

Kim Voss
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Kim Voss: Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, kimvoss@berkeley.edu

Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 2010, vol. 16, issue 3, 369-382

Abstract: This article examines the academic debate over union democracy and compares it with recent research on union renewal in the United States. The juxtaposition reveals that revitalization in US unions has not happened in the ways assumed in the literature on union democracy. Rather than being largely a bottom-up process, revitalization has contained a strong element of centralism and coordination. I suggest that union democracy has too often been framed in singular terms, as only involving the curbing of the illegitimate accumulation of power by union leaders. Yet a key problem faced by unions today — how they might best aggregate the interests of diverse workers and represent new constituencies — is also fundamentally a democratic concern, one that can be addressed only by broadening our understanding of union democracy.

Keywords: Union democracy; labour revitalization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:treure:v:16:y:2010:i:3:p:369-382

DOI: 10.1177/1024258910373868

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