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I agreed with most of what you said, but do want to comment on the idea of a union being inherently democratic. I can't speak to your experience in your union, in whatever industry it may have been. However, I worked for a union and have to say it was the least democratic institution I ever worked for. The union itself was run by an elite tier of ivy league graduates who had probably never worked a day in their life in the industry. Below them, a group of wonky types from the same universities. And below them, the organizers--recruits from the industry floors who were inculcated in the practices of recruiting and expanding the union. They were to be the messengers and foot soldiers for the upper tiers.
The message that was most clear to me by the end of my time there was that the organizers were to be manipulated as much as possible, because they could never understand the long term goals of the organization or how they would most often conflict with the goals of the workers themselves--not only in their own shops, but even in whole cities, whole states. The most important thing was for the organizers to never think for themselves.
Entire meetings were had in which the members of the shop councils--the democratically elected representatives of the union members-- were treated like chess pieces, their individual temperments and strengths used to foil a group here, to accentuate another there. Really, the talk of manipulating them to do things that were not necessarily beneficial to themselves or their co-workers was above board and out in the open, but, of course, never discussed out of the confines of the upper tier meeting rooms.
I won't mention the name of the union, suffice to say that it is one of the fastest growing, in the lowest paid service occupations. If you want democracy, you certainly shouldn't be looking toward them as an example. They are much more like the Democratic party than you could ever imagine.
