[Fmpro] More on Union Problems

[Rick Blanc]

 It is interesting, the similarities between what
 is happening with Local 47 and the ASCAP
 Board and the consistency of our complaints, but 
 maybe we shouldn't be surprised.  The two
 institutions -- really mini-governments -- operate in
 the same marketplace, in related fields, and in the
 same historic time frame.  Both 
 institutions/governments are in a process of
 retrenchment, both are subject to the same types of
 corrupting influences, and typically, both seem to
 have made their own preservation a higher priority
 than the well being of their memberships.

 This is textbook politics, politics being defined as
 the process by which decisions are made, and if
 these institutions are seen for the governments they
 actually are it is easy to see them in purely political
 terms.  This is my approach.

 The corruption of human institutions is nothing new,
 and political theorists and philosophers from
 Augustine to Locke have struggled with this problem.
 We are in the same battle today for the same
 reasons.  We struggle maybe on a more personal
 basis but the larger principles are the same. 

 Everything changes and nothing changes.  I'm not 
 sure how this plays out in the details, but for
 inspiration I went to the words of Thomas Jefferson
 who was a lot smarter than me:

 "When, in the course of human events, it becomes
 necessary for a people to advance from that
 subordination (this is from a draft, not the final
 version) in which they have hitherto remained....
 ... a decent  respect to the opinions of mankind
 requires that they should declare the causes which
 impel them to change."

 He goes on after describing the rights of man and
 their derivation.... "that to secure these ends,
 governments are instituted... deriving their just
 powers from the consent of the governed: that
 whenever any form of government shall become
 destructive of these ends, it is the right of the
 people to alter or abolish it ..... "
  
 While this approach may seem simplistic or academic 
 I believe it is informative in broadening perspective.
 Union democracy is a sham.  It probably always has
 been but today it has become ridiculously obvious. 
 Union democracy, to the extent it existed at all, has
 been undermined in every conceivable way, and some
 people are plotting as we speak to keep it that way.
 The failure of union democracy was probably not by
 design but a product of the fact that unions have no   
 partisan legislative process or balance of powers,
 no internal checks and balances.  This is one of the
 primary reasons I believe unions are unreformable.  
 When Gorbachev introduced glasnost and perestroika
 into the Soviet system in an effort to reform it the 
 Soviet Union collapsed. 

 The collectivist approach is full of platitudes meant to
 deceive, like 'fraternally yours.'  As Orwell pointed out
 in Animal Farm, generally accepted as a parable of the
 Bolshevik Revolution, the pig (I believe, I don't 
 remember his name) in charge said "All animals are
 equal, but some are more equal than others."

 I don't pretend to know the solutions to all the
 problems we are discussing here; at least we are
 getting them out in the open.  But one thing I am
 quite sure of is that we cannot depend on our 
 respective union leaderships to solve anything.  They
 are part of the problem not part of the solution.

 Rick