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Pick Your Process

The group has got to agree on a decision making process. The obvious choices are consensus and majority rule. Majority rule has a bad rep amongst some people, but it gets the job done. If it's done right you'll almost always have consensus anyhow, but you've got a really functional system to go forward with when consensus can't be reached. Consensus usually means long meetings with a lot of long talk that goes way off the subject at hand. In my experience you can get a lot fairer, more democratic and egalitarian process, in actual practice, with majority rule, and get a lot more work done. Consensus is more applicable to a house meeting, to a small group that lives together and is really tight. With a more diverse group like an iww local, that actually has a lot of work to get done, majority rule is the best bet. Consensus is also much easier to sabotage. I've seen it done more than once.

That's not to suggest that reaching consensus is undesirable.  On the contrary, achieving consensus is the best possible outcome of majority rule, though not always possible.

In any case, Consensus Process is technically precluded by the IWW Constitution, according to the General Bylaws, Article I, Section 2:

A majority vote cast shall rule in the general organization and its subordinate parts.

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