There are countless counter examples that are obvious. Teacher's unions (hard to fire teachers, poor quality). Transit unions (mandating 2 drivers per subway car, crazy benefits, etc). Auto industry fighting EVs.
Sorry, it just doesn't make any sense to make such a broad statement regarding this at all.
A union's job is to protect the union. Nothing else.
That is an entirely different argument that's not particularly germane to this topic. One can agree that unions, in the past, have helped workers, and also understand that they are not always in the best interest of the general public. It's complex, but possible!
No, that is not a “complex” position at all. On the contrary, it’s a fairly simple position where you take no strong stance but still want to claim the positive aspects from each side.
Are unions universally good? No, because humans are in the loop, and humans can do bad things.
Does that change the fact that the concept of a union is one of the greatest innovations in all of human history? No.
Can unions today help disparate human workers collectively improve their working conditions? Yes, because this is what unions were designed for, and I think is the key outcome the Rockstar folks are betting on.
For a recent example, read up on the Samsung union bargaining for company wide bonuses in the wake of the huge profits made off the surge in demand for memory.
The Samsung deal is exactly what I'm talking about. It is not all entirely good. Everyone at Samsung not working in chips got screwed. And those lucky few union members used their power to extract an unfair amount of money from the company. This will cause the company to lean towards other avenues in the future, potentially harming everyone else.
Why are those people getting a huge check? Not because they worked harder. Because AI came along and made their product more valuable.
> But a smaller union associated with workers in the consumer electronics division — which boycotted the negotiations and whose 15,000 members were excluded from the vote — accused the lead union of neglecting their interests, and decried the deal as “discriminatory.” Under the agreement, workers in the consumer electronics division are expected to get payouts that are a fraction of those of their semiconductor division peers.
And how exactly is this situation worse than the unfair allocation of salaries and bonuses in companies today? Even within the same company, people can get paid more based on the org/division they work in (e.g. core AI teams), or even based on their (team or individual) perceived value to higher ups.
At least with the Samsung union, the decision is being made bottom up vs. top down.
"Are unions net benefit for the general public" and "whether reforming or abolishing the unions is the best course of action for the general public" are two separate questions. The unions could be beneficial (and still a reform could improve this benefit) or they could be harmful (but a reform could make them beneficial without abolishing them). The original claim was they are beneficial right now, in heir current form, but no actual proof had been provided.
Sorry, it just doesn't make any sense to make such a broad statement regarding this at all.
A union's job is to protect the union. Nothing else.