[ceallen]

Doctors and lawyers regulate who can enter their field. Doctors even control how many students med schools can accept each year. They seem to still be 'prestigious' professions. They were just smart enough to avoid the word 'union', since it's been tarnished by 50 years of political attacks.

I'd also trade in a lot of prestige for the guarantee of employers not having overtime as a free resource that employees are expected to give with a smile.

[talmand]

Just because a group of people got together to agree on something work-related doesn't necessarily make them like a union.

But I agree on the prestige thing, I'm a non-union web developer and I don't feel much prestige in my position.