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by dragonwriter
2494 days ago
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> Why would workers not just stop being in the union, since it costs $3k to join and 2% of your salary to stay? Because the entire workforce at a union shop has to quit at once, at the same time the shop has to decide that they are not a union shop any longer. Or a majority has to elect new leadership in the union who will replace the problematic rules. Or a majority (either of the whole membership or of workers in a defined subarea) need to vote to decertify (and optionally replace) the union. Because of these, “everyone has to quit at once” is literally never an issue. > Also PR and propaganda could easily make workers believe the union is good for them even if it isn't Sure, but workers opposed to the existing union and employers and union parent organizations competing with the parent of the existing union (or wanting to become the parent of there is no current parent) are all able to deploy “PR and propaganda” (two different names for the same thing) against the established union, too. |
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"The Market" (or however you want to think about it) is not perfectly efficient - if it were, there would never have been any motivation to form unions because every employee's requirements would already be perfectly reflected in the companies they chose to work for. Rather, sluggish network effects and other non-invisible-hand structures dominate immediate results.
All power tends to concentrate. When it gets large enough, it attracts those who seek and hold power for their own ends rather than any benevolently stated goals. Your scenarios are straightforwardly mitigated by union leadership directly appeasing the leaders of such movements, the same way monopolist companies buy out possible competitors to keep a stranglehold - the creation rate of competition is itself limited.
I don't know too many specifics about SAG-AFTRA itself, but its hold over the entire industry is a good indicator that it is indeed too large. Its size implies politicking on the order of at least a city government. Conversely, that size may also be the minimum necessary to engage in collective bargaining across different production companies, and so any general top-down reform is a bit hazy. My only direct experience with this is seeing casual SAG actors having to do a bunch of extra paperwork to participate in a strictly non-profit hobby short film production. It seemed quite ridiculous and onerous, until I thought about the neighboring gradient of low-budget for-profit film production.