The plank in brief

Workers should hold power by organizing freely, choosing their own associations, and governing together, without coercion and without a monopoly. The old model is a single machine where union, state, and employer blur into one: compulsory membership, centralized bureaucracy, suppressed dissent, opaque finances, captive benefits, and crony contracts. Power concentrates and workers lose it. What I want instead is a plural labor ecosystem. Free to join, free to leave, free to build.

In practice that means many free unions competing by ideas, with solidarity by choice. Sectoral bargaining sets standards that cover everyone in a sector, member or not, without forcing anyone to join. Every workplace elects a council with a real say over schedules, safety, technology, and conditions, and workers elect representatives to major company boards with full rights on strategy and investment. When a firm closes, relocates, or automates, its workers get the first chance to buy it, run it, or repurpose it. Health care, retirement, and leave follow the worker across jobs, freelance work, and self-employment. Cooperative development banks finance co-ops, employee-owned firms, and community enterprises on fair terms. Pensions and health institutions are independent, with multi-stakeholder boards that no single union or employer controls. A national labor congress coordinates, shares data, sets common standards and mediates national disputes, but it owns no ordinary commercial firms, collects no compulsory dues, and holds no monopoly charter, and it answers to the law, to audits, and to open elections. It serves. It doesn’t dominate.

Objections and replies

None posted yet. If you have a strong objection to this plank, send it to me. The strongest ones go up here with my reply.

Changes

• November 2026: first published here.