True, but impractical. You're essentially saying every employee should have a lawyer look over their employment contract every time they get a new job?
They _SHOULD_, but is it really practical to expect people to?
Do you want to spend 1% upfront or 100% later? As I said in another comment, employment contract review is often $300-1000, and lawyers will do it for free if they like you.
It's not hard to check union dues avg a few percent of income per year. Over a 5 year job this is an order of magnitude more paid out of your salary than the once paid alternative listed here.
The collective weight of the union as a counterweight to employer power and overreach is also wirth something. In a dispute with your employer, HR is never on your side, but the union is.
The 1% is from the comment I responded to (and is actually higher than my past experience - employment contracts are really easy to read). The 3% is from an average of union dues.
Even more impractical, this would imply that the legal team at the company would need to negotiate terms with every single new hire's lawyer. Would be very expensive.
I am not from the US, but I always have a union lawyer look at my employment contracts before I sign them. It's part of my union's service. If you ask me, "expert legal team on retainer" is one of the primary reasons for being part of a union.
It's pretty cheap if it's a standard contract. If you're friends with a lawyer they will do it for free. They will generally tell you where the pitfalls are, even when you can't negotiate your contract.
There is something for that, it's called unions. Where I work, my employment contract had my name, my salary, where in the organization I was going to work and with what role, and a reference to a massive standard contract negotiated by a powerful union with all the companies in the country who would hire me for that role. That was it, two pages, it was basically a form.
I did read the massive contract with the union that effectively set the terms of my employment, because, of course. But I knew it wouldn't be too bad, because, well, numbers.
Tangential, there are some things that we humans can still do better than an AI, but it's not a given is going to remain like that forever. If things continue the way they go, people will still need food, shelter, healthcare and everything else, but economic organizations that provide those things may not need people. So, we should definitely be having a debate about the current social contract and how we will arrange the future to benefit us.
The world is so fucked.