Union view on Voting Proceedure by Sam Weinstein

Letter from:
Sam Weinstein, Assistant to the National President, Utility Workers Union of America

I was quite surprised when I heard about the voting rules for boycotts at Rainbow. The requirement that you have to get a two thirds majority, not among those voting, but among those eligible to vote, seems to me incredibly restrictive, making it virtually impossible to ever achieve a high enough vote to create or join a boycott. I suspect it would have been difficult to achieve even in the case of South Africa under the apartheid regime. I have been a trade union official for the Utility Workers Union for more than 25 years and have never seen such voting restrictions in the context of trade unions.

When you analyze these voting requirements, you can see how they function to actually subvert democracy and the will of the majority, rather than protecting minorities on critical issues. In most elections in my experience it is unusual to have more than 70% of the eligible voters voting. That is because there are always some who don’t care or can’t make up their mind, or others who are unavailable, either because they are sick or on vacation or some similar reason. If even we were to raise that percentage to three quarters (75%), we find that at least 89% of those voting must vote in favor of the boycott for the resolution to pass. Thus barely 10% of the eligible voters, actually voting against the resolution, can frustrate the will of an overwhelming majority. Rainbow’s voting rule counting non-voters as no votes has little to do with ensuring that a decisive majority is in favor before a boycott is attempted.

National Labor Relations Board votes determining whether a union will win bargaining rights for 100% of the employees at a particular company only require a vote of 50% plus one of those voting, not of those eligible. If this bare majority wins, in most cases all employees will be required to pay union dues and can no longer cut personal deals. Like the Rainbow vote, this vote is usually conducted on site at the workplace.

When voting for a strike where 100% solidarity is a necessity in order to win the strike, the bylaws of many local unions do not even require a two thirds majority of those voting to call for the strike. I have never seen a strike vote that counted those who did not vote even though everybody understands that if the vote passes, you will be out on strike without a paycheck whether or not you bothered to vote and whether or not you voted for it.

I have only seen such voting requirements on rare occasions in the context of stock votes in corporations where I have had the pleasure of frustrating the will of management with a relatively tiny minority by adding the share votes of those I was campaigning with to the share votes of those who did not bother to return their proxies.