[chii]

> I fully believe labor needs as much leverage against capital as possible for the scales to be balanced at all

Competition is required, rather than unionization. If an industry is dominated by monopolies, not only do customers suffer, workers do too. Unions don't really fix the problem - only make certain groups win over others.

[Muromec]

For once, the union is one of the rare in-groups that are very easy to join and actually benefit their members

[missedthecue]

The problem is that they tend to benefit their members in a zero sum way. For example the LIRR wants a double digit raise not in exchange for hitting targets on on-time arrivals or some other metric. They want it or they strike and hold the community hostage. It bothers me that there's no value exchange it's just take take take, and ultimately at my expense.

[Muromec]

Double digit raise in this economy and for the economic strata that does this work and is more exposed to prices more than some others, double digit sounds reasonable. The union just wants their members to not be piss poor. Is this bad?

[missedthecue]

They earn $220k a year for jobs that aren't worth that. Income equals expenditure; they are one and the same. So the $220k comes from someone else, and those people aren't getting value for money, they're being robbed and stolen from by a greedy union that doesn't know when to stop biting the hand that feeds. It's pretty disgusting.

[AnimalMuppet]

Worse, public sector unions are ultimately at my expense in a way that I can't even fix by not buying the product, since they're taking it from my taxes.

[BobaFloutist]

>that are very easy to join

That's the case for most service-sector unions, but a lot (certainly not all) of builder's unions seem to meter the amount of people that are allowed to join, making it prohibitively difficult to actually get into the union.

[Muromec]

Now that sounds like a guild and illegal as fuck, but what do I know