That is hard because you have to convince many other people to agree. It's easier for me to just undercut other people by taking less pay. I can for example going remote and live in low living cost area.
On the side of the employees, unions have proven themselves to be good means to improve the situation for employees. Here in Germany they definitely have helped in many industries.
My comment was more about the companies though which may form cartels to drive down employee wages. Companies forming cartels is illegal, while unions are legal in many places.
Yeah but even at that point faang (or well at that point apple, Ms, google, Netflix didn't exist and Facebook broke the cartel) compensation was significantly more than people in Europe were making.
And with anti-collusion labor protections, engineers stood to make even more.
In the US, union workers make between 10% to 30% more than their non-union peers[1].
You're comparing pay across two different economies and only looking at unionization as a variable. It's like wondering why engineer rates in Omaha, Nebraska aren't on par with those in New York, and concluding that it has something to do with differing fire codes.
> And with anti-collusion labor protections, engineers stood to make even more.
Correct, but these protections exist (and existed at the time) independent from a union.
> In the US, union workers make between 10% to 30% more than their non-union peers
There's very few high-skill jobs which are commonly unionized. In a market where supply is greater than demand, then yes unions have absolutely shown to improve worker outcomes[1]. I'm not aware of any evidence for markets where demand outstrips supply (like that for skilled software engineers). It's not immediately clear that union protections would be beneficial.
>You're comparing pay across two different economies and only looking at unionization as a variable.
No, I'm simply pointing out that your flippant response to esoterica doesn't actually address the question. If unions are better for workers, why is it that a non-union area !!with a cartel depressing wages!! was still substantially better for workers than a unioned area with no such issue?
Saying "oh the market is different" ignores the question of why the market is different.
[1]: Indeed, that's kind of exactly what happened with this cartel. Facebook wanted to hire skilled engineers, and was willing to pay more, so broke the cartel. That kind of thing won't happen when workers are generally equivalent, but SWEs aren't.
I've said that they are good means, not the best means. And I guess the reason why they are paid so little is the higher profit margins of FAANG companies as well as probably the alternative in SV that you can found a startup and make much much more if you're good (and lucky).
Unions are basically legalized price fixing. What happens is that the union negotiate a "fair" price, and then all companies decide to pay no more than said "fair" price. See for example (original is in Swedish):
The problem is that the numbers that gets published by unions in Sweden are taken as law by employers. You don't really know what unions are like if you haven't heard your employer say "We can't give you a bigger raise due to our collective agreement". And since basically all other employers follow the same guidelines you can't get competing offers for significantly more. There is a reason why salaries are very flat in Sweden.
Another way to see it, collective bargaining goes both ways, ie both workers and employers will come to a joint agreement. So if we created a FAANG engineers union and created a joint pay-scale for them, then that would basically be equivalent to the non poaching agreement often derided in discussions like this.
Not all union models have sector bargaining and it certainly doesn't work for professional unions - and I am not saying that European unions really get the needs of m&P members and need to change.
My comment was more about the companies though which may form cartels to drive down employee wages. Companies forming cartels is illegal, while unions are legal in many places.