Pluralistic: Break up bad companies; replace bad union bosses (15 Dec 2025)


Today's links


A picket line; the picketers are holding militant hand-lettered signs. Behind them, in a red halo, is a cigar-chomping boss figure.

Break up bad companies; replace bad union bosses (permalink)

Unions are not perfect. Indeed, it is possible to belong to a union that is bad for workers: either because it is weak, or corrupt, or captured (or some combination of the three).

Take the "two-tier contract." As unions lost ground – thanks to changes in labor law enforcement under a succession of both Republican and Democratic administrations – labor bosses hit on a suicidal strategy for contract negotiations. Rather than bargaining for a single contract that covered all the union's dues-paying members, these bosses negotiated contracts that guaranteed benefits for existing members, but did not extend these benefits to new members:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/25/strikesgiving/#shed-a-tier

A two-tier contract is one where all workers pay dues, but only the dwindling rump of older, more established workers get any protection or representation from their union. An ever-larger portion of the membership have to pay dues, but get nothing for them. You couldn't come up with a better way to destroy unions if you tried.

Thankfully, union workers figured out that the answer to this problem was firing their leaders and replacing them with militant, principled leaders who cared about workers, not just a subsection of their members. Radicals in big unions – like the UAW – teamed up with comrades from university grad students' unions to master the arcane rules that had been weaponized by corrupt bosses to prevent free and fair union elections. Together, they forced the first legitimate union elections in generations, and then the newly elected leaders ran historic strikes that won huge gains for workers (and killed off the two-tier contract):

https://theintercept.com/2023/04/07/deconstructed-union-dhl-teamsters-uaw/

Corrupt unions aren't the only life-destroying institutions that radicals have set their sights on this decade. Concentrated corporate power is the most dangerous force in the world today (indeed, it's large, powerful corporations that corrupted those unions). Antitrust activists, environmental activists, consumer rights activists, privacy activists and labor activists have stepped up the global war on big business all through this decade. From new antitrust laws to antitrust lawsuits to strikes to boycotts to mass protests and direct action, this decade has marked a turning point in the global consciousness about the danger of corporate power and the need to fight it.

But there's a big, important difference between bad corporations and bad unions: what we should do about them.

The answer to a powerful, corrupt corporation is to take action that strips it of its power: break the company up, whack it with fines, take away its corporate charter, strip its executives of their fortunes, even put them in prison. That's because corporations are foundationally undemocratic institutions, governed by "one share, one vote" (and the billionaires who benefit from corporate power are building a society that's "one dollar, one vote").

They fundamentally exist to consolidate power at the expense of workers, suppliers and customers, to extract wealth by imposing costs on the rest of us, from pollution to political corruption. When a corporation gets big enough to pose a risk to societal wellbeing, we need to smash that corporation, not reform it.

But the answer to a corrupt union is to fire the union bosses and replace them with better ones. The mission of a union is foundationally pro-democratic. A unionized workplace is a democratic workplace. As in any democracy, workplace democracies can be led by bad or incompetent people. But, as with any democracy, the way you fix this is by swapping out the bad leaders for good ones – not by abolishing democracy and replacing it with an atomized society in which it's every worker for themself, bargaining with a boss who will always win a one-on-one fight in the long run.

I raise this because a general strike is back on the table, likely for May Day 2028 (5/1/28):

https://labornotes.org/2025/12/maybe-general-strike-isnt-so-impossible-now

Unions are an important check against fascism. That's why fascists always start by attacking organized labor: solidarity is the opposite of fascism.

To have unions that are fit for purpose in this existential battle for the future of the nation – and, quite possibly, the human race – we desperately need better leaders. Like the union bosses who gave us the two-tier contract, many of our union leaders see their mission as narrowly serving their existing members, and not other workers – not even workers who might some day become their members.

To get a sense of how bad it's gotten, consider these five facts:

I. Public support for unions is at its highest level since the Carter administration;

II. More workers want to join unions than at any time in living memory;

III. Unions have larger cash reserves than at any time in history;

IV. Under Biden, the National Labor Relations Board was more friendly to unions than at any time in generations; and

V. During the Biden years, the number of unionized workers in America went down, not up.

That's because union bosses – sitting on a mountain of cash, surrounded by workers begging to be organized – decided that their priority was their existing members, and declined to spend more than a pittance of their cash reserves on organizing efforts.

This is suicidal – as self-destructive as the two-tier contract was. To pull off a general strike, we will need mass civil disobedience, and a willingness to ignore the Taft-Hartley Act's ban on solidarity strikes. Trump's NLRB isn't just hostile to workers – he's illegally fired so many of its commissioners that they can't even perform most of their functions. But a militant labor movement could turn that to its advantage, because militants know that when Trump fires the refs, you don't have to stop the game – you can throw out the rule book:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/29/which-side-are-you-on-2/#strike-three-yer-out

This is the historic opportunity and challenge before us – to occupy our unions, save our workplace democracies, and then save our national democracy itself.

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

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Recent appearances (permalink)


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Latest books (permalink)


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Upcoming books (permalink)

  • "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

  • "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

  • "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

  • "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

  • "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

  • "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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