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Workplace Democracy and Democratic Worker Organizations: Notes on Worker Centers

  • Catherine L. Fisk
Published/Copyright: February 14, 2016
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Theoretical Inquiries in Law
From the journal Theoretical Inquiries in Law Volume 17 Issue 1

Worker organizing outside the traditional union framework in the United States has lately focused on worker centers, which provide the benefits of collective action and participatory workplace democracy without the legal obstacles faced by unions. This Article offers thoughts on legal regulation of worker organizations’ internal governance to facilitate collective power with appropriate protection for the rights of individuals within the collective. Federal law extensively regulates the internal governance of unions so as to protect minorities in an organization that is an exclusive representative. It does not apply to worker centers, which disclaim the desire to represent workers for bargaining. Worker centers are regulated only lightly, under state law of nonprofit organizations. But if they become powerful, they will be large and will need to be managed by a leadership that may or may not remain accountable to the membership and respectful of minority rights. This Article offers a reading of the literature on union democracy from the 1950s as notes toward thinking about governance of worker organizations that are not labor unions.

Democracy was the political moment when the demos recognized that the power of the polis was their power, not an illegal seizure of something that belonged to the rich or well born.

Sheldon Wolin, “Democracy: Electoral and Athenian” (1993)

Published Online: 2016-2-14
Published in Print: 2016-2-1

© 2016 by Theoretical Inquiries in Law

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Theoretical Inquiries in Law
  2. Research Article
  3. Introduction: Labor Scholarship in an Era of Uncertainty
  4. Research Article
  5. Reframing the New Deal: The Past and Future of American Labor and the Law
  6. Research Article
  7. The Right Not to Have Rights: Posted Worker Acquiescence and the European Union Labor Rights Framework
  8. Research Article
  9. Organizing: Should the Employer Have a Say?
  10. Research Article
  11. Workplace Democracy and Democratic Worker Organizations: Notes on Worker Centers
  12. Research Article
  13. Organizing Workers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico: The Authoritarian-Corporatist Legacy and Old Institutional Designs in a New Context
  14. Research Article
  15. Organizing Workers in “Hybrid Systems”: Comparing Trade Union Strategies in Four Countries — Austria, Germany, Israel and the Netherlands
  16. Research Article
  17. Trade Union Ambivalence Toward Enforcement of Employment Standards as an Organizing Strategy
  18. Research Article
  19. Unionizing Subcontracted Labor
  20. Research Article
  21. The Untamed Politics of Urban Informality: “Gray Space” and Struggles for Recognition in an African City
  22. Research Article
  23. Informal Workers’ Aggregation and Law
  24. Research Article
  25. Active Industrial Citizenship of Domestic Workers: Lessons Learned from Unionizing Attempts in Israel and the United Kingdom
  26. Research Article
  27. Organizing in the Shadows: Domestic Workers in the Netherlands
https://doi.org/10.1515/til-2016-0005

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Theoretical Inquiries in Law
  2. Research Article
  3. Introduction: Labor Scholarship in an Era of Uncertainty
  4. Research Article
  5. Reframing the New Deal: The Past and Future of American Labor and the Law
  6. Research Article
  7. The Right Not to Have Rights: Posted Worker Acquiescence and the European Union Labor Rights Framework
  8. Research Article
  9. Organizing: Should the Employer Have a Say?
  10. Research Article
  11. Workplace Democracy and Democratic Worker Organizations: Notes on Worker Centers
  12. Research Article
  13. Organizing Workers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico: The Authoritarian-Corporatist Legacy and Old Institutional Designs in a New Context
  14. Research Article
  15. Organizing Workers in “Hybrid Systems”: Comparing Trade Union Strategies in Four Countries — Austria, Germany, Israel and the Netherlands
  16. Research Article
  17. Trade Union Ambivalence Toward Enforcement of Employment Standards as an Organizing Strategy
  18. Research Article
  19. Unionizing Subcontracted Labor
  20. Research Article
  21. The Untamed Politics of Urban Informality: “Gray Space” and Struggles for Recognition in an African City
  22. Research Article
  23. Informal Workers’ Aggregation and Law
  24. Research Article
  25. Active Industrial Citizenship of Domestic Workers: Lessons Learned from Unionizing Attempts in Israel and the United Kingdom
  26. Research Article
  27. Organizing in the Shadows: Domestic Workers in the Netherlands
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