[sevenzero]

Only employee. Joining an union is too expensive for me though given the reward seems pretty small. My industry does not even have a proper union (in Germany) so I'd have to join a generic one (verdi) which doesn't offer enough perks for me personally.

[LtWorf]

Ah yes we all know unions take at least 99% of your salary…

[sevenzero]

Did I ever claim that? Its 1% of my montly gross salary which is about 40€/month which is just too much given I have 2.500€/month to survive with.

[esperent]

Have you evaluated how much better bargaining power that €40 would get you? You might stand to make a lot more back.

[roenxi]

He's the only employee in a 2 man company. How exactly do your think the relationship here is likely to be play out? IMO it is likely that he has a pretty good and probably rather personable relationship with the company owner. And quite likely has rather good bargaining power already given that he can double his employer's workload by walking out the door and it'd in all likelihood be a big headache to replace him.

If he can't leverage his power when he already represents 100% of the company's employees a union is unlikely to help.

[mrweasel]

That really depends on your industry and your union (and where you're based). My union doesn't negotiate my salary, I do. They do provide help with contracts, NDAs, legal advise and a bunch of other stuff and do provide salary guidance. They are also cheap at ~€475 a year.

Another larger union, which organises industrial workers, cleaning staff and generally people with less formal education, is almost twice the cost. They do negotiate at least base pay for the industries they represent. Many of the people they represent are often better off having their union do the negotiations. When handling negotiations it's obviously not only about money, but the unions do need to be able to provide at least raise in salary that can cover their dues, and sometimes they can't.