UFCW Canada highlights Gustavo Coronel: More leaders less power addicts

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Friday, June 13, 2003 By: David Coleman

VHeadline.com commentarist Gustavo Coronel's often controversial editorials are getting an airing on a United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Canada website where one of his recent thought-provoking editorials has been brought to the attention of some 230,000 trade union members participating actively in the Canadian Labor Congress and Provincial Labor Federations.

The UFCW website says that while Coronel's More Leaders and less Power Addicts, published May 30, pertains to Venezuela and is not directly aimed at unions, the topics of power and leadership are always relevant to union reformers.

Many union reformers are tired of existing leaders whose main objective is a desire to achieve and hold onto to power.

Coronel states in his article that power addicts and leadership are old foes. The names and faces of the holders of power have changed over the course of time, but most have only had a lust for power and many were promoters of misery and ignorance.

True leaders on the other hand are rarely officially elected to positions of power says Coronel, but play a part in influencing change.

Robert C. Tucker's book Politics as Leadership brings forth the concept of leaders in the platonic sense, one that has to do with inspiring followers to better themselves and work together rather than reducing followers to the condition of members of a herd.

James MacGregor Burns in his book Leadership states that leadership has to do with the persuasion of followers "to act for certain goals which represent the values, the motivations, the needs, the aspirations and expectations of both leaders and followers." Burns also distinguishes between leaders and power-wielders.

Leaders, in Burns view, are there to satisfy the motives of their followers whereas power-wielders are intent only on realizing their own purposes.

If we were to use Burns' analysis, where would those who run our unions fit? Leaders or power wielders?

Are your union's leaders power-wielders as defined by Burns? Do they use a transactional or transforming leadership style?

In the union reform arena, will there still be room for leaders as we know them today or will the word "leader" have a different context? Is there a need for power wielding leaders within unions at all or are workers capable of deciding their own values and motives? Are union reformers really union transformers?