What are worker unions, and why is there opposition?
In: Economics
One thing to add on is that certain unions, such as those in the public sector, negotiate with the government for benefits and pay, which is nice, but one reason there is opposition to public sector unions is because the union can then donate money to a political candidate and help them get elected. They then negotiate with the same person they got into office and who that person depends on to stay in office. This is a setup for corruption.
The politician has little stake in negotiating in the interest of the public (unlike a private employer, who has overheads and expenses to think about), and now the politician was put in place by the same people who he or she is to negotiate with.
If your workplace says you don’t need a Union.
You ABSOLUTELY need a union.
In my country we don’t have minimum wages by law.
Its decided by negotiations in the different branches of work every year. With the unions, employers ans the government.
Its really great. They negotiate on behalf of the employees on a larger scale and for example they get things like extra week vacation or paid lunch.
Unions provide many things but in a nutshell they help protect workers from poor treatment and help negotiate wages and benefits.
Why they are disliked is a harder question. Some people feel like they are held back and feel like they can negotiate benefits better for them selves. Some don’t like that unions protect bad and good workers equally. Me personally, I don’t like them because I am required to join them in my state as a condition of employment and the union uses my money for political causes I disagree with.
Workers unions, at the most broad level, function similarly to something like AAA. You pay a monthly or annual membership fee, and the organization uses that money to collectively negotiate better terms for you (which is how AAA members get discounts on stuff). For some people, the benefits from membership outweigh the costs, so they remain a member, and other people leave when they feel like it’s no longer worth it. From the other side (hotels, etc), you can freely choose to give AAA members discounts or choose not to.
However, in the US specifically, we’ve had decades of conflict between management and employees and as a result, the government has added a lot of regulations around unions that frankly don’t really make sense, and kinda break their original business model. These regulations tend to force an all-or-nothing union where it’s incredibly hard to join or start a union, but also incredibly difficult to leave or dissolve a union, and take away the incentive for the union to have a friendlier relationship with employers. As a result, employees only really form unions when they either already have extreme leverage and/or when their working conditions push them over the edge. Rather than a slow rampup of complaints/quitting/etc, companies get an immediate shock when all of their employees unionize (or if they’re already unionized, strike), and have to deal with a now adversarial relationship with their employees.
Others have covered what a union is. Why opposition? Several reasons
1) Initial opposition from the employer is obvious. Will reduce profits and cause tons of non-business related head-aches. Another cook in the kitchen type thing.
2) Some employees don’t want to be bound by union rules and union dues. Some high performing employees don’t want to be restricted and miss out on bonuses, promotions, and raises.
3) Over time, unions tend to become bloated, political, and corrupt bureaucracies that fight for prosperity of the union organization, not necessarily the union members. Instead of just a few of the workers running the union in their spare time, eventually the union will hire full-time workers to run the union, essentially becoming a business in and of itself.
4) Entrenched unions need a cause at all times. If there aren’t any, then union members start to question why they are paying the union bosses. Union employees will sometimes purposefully create friction between management and the workers to justify the continued existence of the union and increasing union dues. This allows the union bosses increase their revenue and pay. For instance, the CEO of Teamsters made $2.5 million in 2021.
5) Unions can encourage lack of productivity in the work force. If you tell workers that pay raises are no longer tied to performance and that you basically can’t be fired for poor performance, then why work hard? Why bust ass if it won’t get you a raise or promotion?
6) Unions can kill businesses or force offshoring. Increased costs, lower margins, decreased productivity. Doesn’t take a genius to work this one out. Famously John Lewis was the leader of the United Mine Workers Union in the early 20th century. He called so many strikes that entire industry segments converted their businesses from coal powered to oil powered because the flow of coal was so inconsistent. He became known as “the greatest oil salesman” and almost single handedly killed the coal industry.
Suppose as an individual worker, you feel unhappy about the pay and conditions your employer is offering. You feel they are exploiting you, paying you poorly, forcing you to work ridiculous hours, do unsafe or unqualified work, etc.
If you as an individual try to take this up with the employer, they can just tell you to piss off. They can hire someone else to do the job. You the individual worker have no power versus the employer.
Instead, suppose *every* worker at the company takes a stand against the employer. Now if the employer still wanted to tell them to piss off, they would be forced to sack their entire workforce and replace them. This is much harder for them to do, so now the employees have more power. The employer is pretty much forced to listen to their demands for better pay and conditions. Strength in numbers.
Now suppose that in addition to this, *every worker in the industry* makes the same demands. So now ALL employers in the industry need to provide a minimum level of pay, conditions, safety, etc for all of the workers in the industry.
This industry-wide collective is a ‘union’. It is an organisation committed to help guarantee basic conditions for everyone in the industry. Employees pay a union fee, and in exchange they have this organisation to represent them and their interests.
Sounds great! So why is there opposition to unions? Basically there are three main streams
1) In the US especially, some unions were traditionally infiltrated by the Mafia and other criminal elements. They would then leverage the union’s power to use strike threats to extort companies, and/or directly steal union money set aside for employee pensions and benefits. This has led to a negative reputation in some quarters, of unions as being corrupt criminal organisations hell-bent on exploiting employers.
2) In the era of globalisation, it’s been argued that having strong unions simply drives industries overseas. Instead of meeting the union demands in a developed country, it’s cheaper for industries to set up in South American or Asian countries where labour laws are weaker.
3) If a union protects workers, the downside is that they can protect *bad* workers. There’s a perception that having a strong union can make it much harder to weed out the bad apples from an industry ( e.g. corrupt cops, incompetent teachers, lazy/jaded doctors, etc).
Because unions are strongly associated with the political Left, there is also often a heavy partisan slant to people’s view of unions. You’ll get people claiming the unions are a perfect utopian necessity to fight back against evil corporations, and others claiming unions are a horrible commie scourge that are destroying the economy. As is usually the case in politics, the truth is somewhere in between the two extremes.
I didnt see it mentioned, but in the heyday of unions in the US, the mafia was also heavily involved in some of them, as they saw it as another way to make money. That also fed into propaganda against unions and helped drive membership down across the board
A place where you get to make more money than people with twice your education level… assuming you graduated from high school. My town, teamsters are the wealthy, cause if you know somebody… you know what I mean…
Market is based on bargaining. Results of bagaining tend to be unjust when the power of bargaining parties is skewed. Large corporations have much better bargaining position than single, atomized, job seeker. Unions are there to offset this.
Plenty of answers here on why they are considered good. The bad: they create a middleman complication to you getting paid. That middleman hierarchy is made of people who can be corrupt. The UAW had at least 16 members arrested and charged with embezzlement, effectively stealing your union dues money.
https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2021/11/10/uaw-corruption-scandal-tim-edmunds/6368075001/
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