[scoofy]

The advent of parallel treatment of different workers in a shop the late 1970's is one of the main reasons we saw union membership start declining. Two-tiered bargaining structures started to show up as soon as there were difficult economic headwinds. When one segment of the union with some seniority is unwilling to make sacrifices for the younger generations, you end up with as system that is bad for non-trivial number of workers, and is literally the opposite of meritocratic. Solidarity only goes as far as "I've got mine" for many folks, and when that happens, the union as a way of protecting workers turns into a vehicle for extracting concessions at the expense of others.

Examples of ruinous two-tiered contracts include UFCW's 1978 contract, Teamsters' 1979 contract, UAW's 1979 contract and their 2007 contract.

[bwestergard]

No disagreement from me there. I am a stalwart financial and activist supporter of LaborNotes, which organizes across unions to eliminate two-tier contracts.

But two-tier contracts are the result of employer power. Employers always portray them as an inevitable outcome of the legal form of collective bargaining; the historical record cannot sustain this reading.

The solution to two tier is more powerful unions, which are inherently more democratic unions, because wage workers only have leverage if they act in concert.