this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
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You get where I was going with this! It's exactly that constructed form, and the supposed favoring of it, that led to my asking this.
If a society claims to embrace democracy, but doesn't extend this to the organization of its businesses, how much do they embrace democratic values?
Why would a privately owned business need to be democratic? What is the advantage of giving all employees an equal say regardless if theor skills and understanding of the business from a business perspective rather than a moral one? I cannot see any reason to give the guy who is not permitted access to all the secrets and finances equal say with the folks that have this access.
Have you ever owned, managed, or run a business before?
It isn't a matter of need, but of consistency in one's values. In which case, why would the moral grounds be insufficient?
Not as much as we'd like, unfortunately. A lot of people are DINOs. (Democracy In Name Only)
Or many of use are practical minded adults who have run or managed businesses and thus are reflecting on real world experiences rather than viewing this theoretically.
My union warehouse steward is illiterate. He legitimately cannot read due to undiagnosed and unaddressed learning disabilities. He shouldn't be having an equal say in what to do with finances as my boss who is an ex-CPA. I should also have no say in corporate finances because Im bad at math. The business would be much worse off if the warehouse steward or I had a say.
Then good thing when we talk about democratic workplaces, they aren't just "you have a union" and would actually require full democratic implementation of voting systems and the ability to remove an ineffective representative as long as the majority of workers want to.
Just like in our existing democracy, in a democratic workplace, different people can simultaneously be appointed to positions that manage specific things. A democratic workplace would allow you to actually vote for who you think is qualified to lead a given department (or to vote for someone who you trust will appoint good representatives to those departments)
It sounds to me like you think a badly managed union is the same thing as a workplace democracy, and are trying to claim a workplace democracy wouldn't work because a completely different system isn't currently working in your specific case.