I agree too. But this in itself does not solve the problem. While that will deter those who are motivated by money, it could attract those who are motivated by power alone. So going by that, how do you deal with the “power corrupts” problem?

I’ll sign my name to that. And, if a union official has to be full-time, he should never be paid more than the average of the workers he represents.

On some level I never really understood why, he was a blue collar guy, unions I always thought were meant to protect his rights.

A few months ago when I was there to see him off, and we were sitting around his hospital bed and his best friend told the story about how because he was fighting the union my father would get death threats and led to one evening having him drug out of his car and nearly beaten to death by a group of pro-union workers, people my father worked with 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. People he had known for years.

I thought I’d ask him why.

“Pop, why WERE you anti-union anyway? They were protecting your rights weren’t they?”

He shook his head, he had had several strokes by now and couldn’t talk very well anymore.

“Union protected union. Had to fight. No one else.’

So when pop would try to rally workers to fight back for what they wanted, either through strike or rallys and it didn’t coincide with what the union told the the workers they needed, apparently in the meetings they would villify my father by name or lump him together with the ‘evil management’.

It wasn’t long that those people in those meetings believed the villifying and acted with knuckles and rage.

It kinda made me realise that any organization like that, which requires money to run and followers to exist has so much self interest to keep running that all too often, the decisions made aren’t necessarily in the best interest of the workers.

Not saying there can’t be good unions, just that leadership should be workers themselves, not some uninvolved 3rd party.