[ekianjo]

> Economic development can be limited to the owners of the companies whilst exploiting the employees.

This is often heard but there is little truth to it. The more developed a market is, the larger the opportunities for employees to move to other jobs, and therefore exploitation is a problem that goes away by itself. Many countries in South East Asia have close to zero unions yet benefit from very high living standards and reasonable working hours (at least very much equivalent to the US).

If the "union" theory had any truth in it, then you would expect unions to be everywhere in the world before and during economic development to lead social conditions improvement. Yet social/working conditions improve regardless of unions presence.