Forming a more democratic union: Organized labor and American democracy, ideals and institutions

I examine how competing conceptions of democracy have shaped the development of U.S. labor law, and how in turn labor law has impacted the formation of unions and hence the nation's political democracy. I use the ideas of democratic theorists to illuminate historical debates about labor law, and those associated with contemporary efforts to reform it. I identify three weaknesses in political debates over labor law. First, participants of all political persuasions when engaging in such debates have justified their policy proposals by claiming they will further "democracy in the workplace" without defining just what they believe democracy entails. Second, that participants engaged in the development of labor law have failed to adequately distinguish processes and problems related to union formation from those associated with the governance of unions once formed. Thus they have addressed problems most properly associated with union governance by amending labor law to make it more difficult to form unions. Finally, there has been a tendency to assume that institutions associated with political democracy can be transported unproblematically into the workplace setting.;Having illustrated these weaknesses, I draw on democratic theory to outline a conception of democracy most appropriate for the workplace setting. I then use this conceptualization to evaluate the legal framework that regulates union formation and proposals to reform it, and in addition, to compare the institutions that regulate union formation and those that are used in the political realm for purposes of group formation. As I proceed, I challenge the tendency to treat particular democratic institutions as sacrosanct and thereby insist that they can and must be transported from the political to the economic domain. I am attentive to the importance of clearly differentiating between the problems of forming unions from those involved in holding unions (and union officials) accountable once the union has been formed. These arguments in combination allow me to suggest that the common claim---that unions, compared to the polity, are undemocratic---is misguided and that the current proposal for labor law reform will actually ensure that the union formation process more closely approximates democratic ideals.