The Dilemma of Union Democracy

In: The annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Band 350, Heft 1, S. 46-54

Abstract

American unions have been undergoing major internal shifts of power and authority resulting from their size, their new problems, and their functions. It is proving steadily more difficult to preserve the realities of democratic govern ment as distinct from the forms; the developments within unions resemble those of other types of organization, notably the large corporation. The real problem seems to be not how to make unions more democratic but how to devise methods of accommodating the concentration of power in the hands of officers to the protection of the interests of the members.