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Comment by rablackburn | Hacker News Reader

The issue is the Iron Law applies to the unions as well.

Given enough time unions tend towards bureaucracies dedicated to serving the Union, not its members.

Frankly I think saying the Iron Law is inevitable is a little too pessimistic for me, but it’s definitely something that needs to be consciously monitored/managed.

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Right, but ultimately a union is still a democracy, and the bureaucracy has to stay in power. That seems a lot harder to do if you don't actually have your constituents interests at hand. I will grant that in a large enough union I could see bureaucracy being a problem, like that. But also the fact that unions have been gutted for power (in the US) means that union officials aren't nearly as bad as the equivalent groups in a more powerful institution. Also it means that they're still in the stage where most unions could stay vigilant to avoid it.

Unions can run on autopilot for a long time, though, and their management can coast to victory if the membership is sufficiently disengaged. Old unions in particular can have a silent majority problem, where most of their members are just trying to do their job and get a paycheck, and will never even hear the people who are trying to get involved and fix things. Fixing a union involves a lot of the same work as starting one in the first place, with a lot of the same difficulties.

Just like the USA is a democracy.

The USA is not a democracy... It's a representative democracy i.e. a republic.

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