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At least three reasons: 1) A whole lot of propaganda effort has gone into spreading anti-union sentiment for at least over a century, from the very deep pockets of the richest private actors in the world, like Amazon. Since they managed to capture half the politicians, it has become a culture war issue to the point that being pro and anti union is more a marker of personal identity than a reasoned position. 2) Historically, America's largest unions were often controlled by organized crime, which prevented competition and fixed prices at an artificially high level so mob bosses could get a cut and "consultants" who didn't actually do anything could be put on payroll so someone who owned 20 houses without having a real job could deflect scrutiny from the IRS. Since a lot of what was priced so high because of this was public works construction, it impacted everyone, and gave unions generally a bad reputation. 3) People like me who have never been in a "real" union, but still might have stupid one-off college jobs that nonetheless required you to join a union, have their only exposure come through something ineffective that isn't providing any actual benefits but is taking a cut of your already low pay anyway. For whatever reason, I had to join a union to work at Disneyland, but that didn't prevent me from making $10 an hour, didn't prevent my friend from practically getting her leg burned off and having it blamed on her with no disability assistance, and didn't prevent me from getting laid off when they downsized entertainment. On the other hand, my dad was a plumber and his union seemed to bring him real benefit. But in a white collar environment like Hacker News, or pretty much anywhere you're likely to hang out on the Internet, anyone who has ever been in a union at all was more likely in something like the Disneyland union. |
Unions for licensed professionals are more lobbying organizations than labor representation. Their goal (which they often achieve) is, effectively, regulatory capture to create a barrier to entry into that labor market and drive up scarcity to increase prices.
It's a similar dynamic to public sector unions -- they're really negotiating with the government, and if the union is large enough then they're a significant voting constituency, so it's like a large shareholder in a publicly traded company using their influence over the organization to have the organization engage in self-dealing with the shareholder's other business.