[pastacacioepepe]

Unions can be corrupted or do mistakes, and sometimes unions are not powerful enough in the face of global market shifts.

That doesn't mean unions are bad or useless. It would be like saying that since democratic governments can be corrupted, we should do without democracy.

[thepasswordis]

Hold on just to be clear: do you think the problem in Detroit is that the unions weren't powerful enough?

[TulliusCicero]

Try listed three potential issues with unions, why did you zoom in on just that one?

[pastacacioepepe]

To be clear, just read again. I don't claim to be an expert about Detroit's union history by the way.

> Unions can be corrupted or do mistakes

[seabird]

>I don't claim to be an expert about Detroit's union history by the way.

Industry in Detroit is a perfect example of what can happen when unions have way too much power. The current conversation really downplays how ridiculously powerful unions like the UAW were. It was effectively impossible to lose your job -- you would have line workers that would bring a portable TV to work and watch their work roll past them all day, and they were able to do that until the plants closed down because of the terms the union had in place. I have multiple drawers of tools from vendors that only ever sold B2B; in my father's time, you would buy them off UAW members that stole them from auto manufacturers in decently large quantities, because you wouldn't get fired for it. The only way to reliably lose your job was to cross the union itself. Even people who were part of a union at that time will pretty readily admit that they were unsustainably powerful. We're not even started on the organized crime that came out of unions in Detroit at that time.

The point isn't that unions shouldn't exist at all. The point is that you need to be really careful with comments like the root comment, which describe unions as the common man engaging in a heroic struggle against the forces of capitalist evil, while completely glossing over what they have become in multiple places at multiple points in history.

[zeroonetwothree]

That analogy is poor because we don’t know of a good alternative to democratic governments. But there is an obvious alternative to unions that many workers do prefer.

[pastacacioepepe]

And they can still choose it, since unions are not compulsory as far as I know? So what are we discussing about?

[vasco]

They can choose it by quitting only, as the work changes before and after the union. So instead of having the unhappy people quit when they perceive the company as not being good enough for them, the unhappy people create a union and make the happy people quit instead. It's fine either way by me but it feels a bit pointless.

[seabird]

Not necessarily. Unions can and do negotiate terms that protect union members to ridiculous extents at the cost of making what is basically an underclass out of non-union employees and employees of other unions. You'll find terms that limit certain scopes of work exclusively to employees of a certain union, and even employees of that union with a certain standing within it. Some of this work is gravy train shit that you'll never get to see if you're not in the union or not in the right union. In some unions, working non-union jobs can result in repeating fees for the length of time you do it. Do it long enough and you'll be so far in the hole that you'll effectively never be able to pay it back, you'll never be in good standing, and you'll join the rest of the employees outside of your union that can't draw crazy high pay for very easy work.

[hourago]

Many rights that everybody enjoys were won by unions and applied to everybody. You are generalising to all unions some hypothetical case.

Better job opportunities for a part of the population means that all employers need to improve conditions to compete for employees.

[seabird]

Have you ever worked in a union shop, or have family that did? Demarcation is not a hypothetical case, and it's not something that's so uncommon that you can just not worry about it, especially as a worker that needs to consider whether or not your opportunities are going to be hindered by it. Me, my father, my grandfathers, my friends, their fathers and grandfathers, and basically my community on the whole have watched it happen firsthand or have been directly affected by it. Union membership can be a big choice where you're heavily incentivized to join the union not just on the merits of them protecting you as a worker, but because they're going to work against you if you don't. Some unions have worse problems with it than others, and some don't have the problem at all, but it's not something that is so minor that you can just ignore it.