Please bear with me, as I try to scramble my thoughts together. I'll make sure to go back on this idea to refine and tweak it for performance purposes.
I started to ponder profoundly on the idea of decentralization in relation to highly centralized Unions. Is the idea possible? Maybe. But few have actually undergone such venture. From my head I could think of the Knights of Labor and the IWW. On more modern terms take a look at this:
[Why Unions are going into the co-op business] (http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/how-cooperatives-are-driving-the-new-economy/union-co-ops).
A March 2012 report from the USW, Mondragon, and the Ohio Employee Ownership Center (OEOC), lays out a template for how “union co-ops” can function. “A union co-op is a unionized worker-owned cooperative in which worker-owners all own an equal share of the business and have an equal vote in overseeing the business,” the report states.
Probably one of the few I've actually caught a glance at. Many Unions nowadays however, still function on a linear platform, under an Industrial based system of hierachies and only recently into managerial positions. Why? One theory I have stems back to the Roosevelt administration when Communist, Socialist, and Trade Unionist fought alongside to encapsulate what many refer to Keynesian economics or state run capitalism. And many know too well what happen to the Communist (hint: The Red Scare) and later to the Socialist, because shoot we are America all these scary words are all the same. But in the end who survived? It was the Trade Unionist, it was business unionism. Why? Because they did not want to radicalize the system the way the Communist, Socialist, and some Anarchist wanted to. They were statist to the quo. But let's go even further than that shall we?
The Industrial Revolution where so much bullshit happen: child labor, poor sanitary conditions, dangerous environments, ghostly benefits, weekdays? Hourly work? It was also a great time of washing away the struggle of many White immigrants and their fight for the proletariat liberation. For without their participation we wouldn't be having the "benefits" that we do. Unions then helped to maintain the delicate dichotomy between master and slave.
These two pivotal points: Industrial Revolution and the era of Keynesian economics were particularly well in adopting Labor tactics; at fighting off any wage suppression. But why? I think it falls down on the synonymous connection of centralization that these two pivotal points had in relation to Unions centralized network. In a synchretic manner, Unions could only rely on the centralized apparatus that these two pivotal points created-- Industrial Age you had the monopolies; the Keynesian era it was the State apparatus. Unions needed that centralized network to make it known how much they are needed.
I think the last decentralize Union in modern times at least, was the UFW. In the way they started, everything seem to run on a democratic order, on a horizontal agenda where the workers had their own opinions validated and respected. Up until the Grape boycott when Cesar Chavez started to defect from the group and slowly started to get a god-complex; authoritarian, and what Gilberto Padilla stated when I had a conversation with him about what happen to Cesar, he said "estaba loco; he had political paranoia" It was the very act of centralizing the movement that eventually parted ways with the overall message.
Ever since the Reagan and Thatcher era it Unions got a big beaten. Obviously their only strength and weakness was a heavy reliance on the State apparatus. When that shit moved over sees they kissed the workers power goodbye. But it wasn't really globalization that hit hard for Unions. It was actually the changing economic ecosystem. In the era that precedes the 80s and onwards, something particular different that the capitalist system develops does not compute accordingly to its centralized principles, ladies and gentleman I am speaking about the information techonology--the internet. Prior to all of this, the capitalist system worked well at adopting these new forms of social and economic order. Because again they ran under the guiding principles of centralization. But the hyper combined flux of information and technology created this weird environment that the capitalist system could not translate properly and with it the Unions as well.
The internet, for all purposes, is a weird space of high volatility; high entropy; decentralized. For most of our economic history everything has sort of been running under a low entropic state. It's only natural to begin adopting this natural occurrence in life. But Unions just like these other centralized modes cant begin to fathom was is beginning to unravel before their eyes.
I'm going to stop it here before I go in more of a tangent than I am. Thanks for reading :)