Can the Wisdom of Crowds save the San Francisco Chronicle

In reading about the ultimatum the Hearst Corp has given the San Francisco Chronicle today http://tinyurl.com/dfq8s2  on the Union stranglehold, I am left to wonder how in the world Unions have continued for so long.  Although I have worked for start-ups for the most part of the last 20 years I still understand why Unions began in the first place and why they once made sense.  

But that was more than 80 years ago (http://tinyurl.com/dng35x) when workers needed protection.  By joining forces workers were able to organize against "the man".  Today things are different and when we look at the few areas where Unions still have a strong hold, like US automakers and newspapers, these industries are in deep trouble financially and they have had problems adapting and continuing their competitive edge.  Even back in the days of Jimmy Hoffa, the Unions were not necessarily taking the power of the people and doing what the "crowd" thought was best.  Rather, the Union leaders were using their power over their people to influence corporate treatment of employees.

Now I know change is hard and fear of the unknown can be scary, heck I am building a start-up in the worst economy the world has seen in 80 years.  But in these cases where Unions are creating an environment where companies and segments are no longer competitive than it is time to rid ourselves of the ailing elements.  Apparently in the Chronicles case it is the Union.

I am really curious what the result would be if we were able to take the wisdom of the crowd of Chronicle employees and give them their choice; break the Union and most can keep their job or continue with the Union and most if not all will lose their job.  I realize that this is not the ultimatum posed by the Heasrt Corp but it probably should be.  

Let's take the assumption that "wisdom" would prevail and the employees of the Chronicle would chose to break the Union.  The Chronicle then could follow in Proctor and Gamble's footsteps and crowdsource ideas to turn the company around.  Given the passion displayed in the last day about the Chronicle's fate I think that it is safe to say that we would see a tremendous influx of ideas and contributions about how to keep the company going - that would be neat.

I have no idea what is really going on there but as I am pushing for rapid evolution in a time of decline - I have my fingers crossed that wisdom will prevail and the crowd will have their way.

 

The Crowd is gathering.....