But you already enjoy many benefits already brought about by unions that you did not pay dues for, like weekends off, ending child labor, 40 hr work week, 8 hr work day, benefits around health care, unemployment and more.
Unions have also perpetuated racism, sexism, xenophobia, organized crime, government corruption, etc. It’s not all sunshine and lollipops. America abandoned unions for a reason.
> have also perpetuated racism, sexism, xenophobia, organized crime, government corruption,
The same is true for political parties, religious organizations, and all sorts of other organizations that are made of people, including privately owned companies. Which of these concepts would you like to abandon, and what do you propose should be their replacement?
What you say is an argument for balancing power, not for concentrating it.
Unions are forced participation. I am not forced to participate in political parties or religious organizations. In theory a Union could be purely voluntary in which case cool. I'll opt out. But then the Union loses most of it's leverage so it in practice if a Union gets introduced it's no longer voluntary it's forced for anyone who works at that company. The only choice for someone who doesn't want to contribute to the union is to leave the company.
Government is also forced participation but I accept it as necessary part of a functioning society. I don't see Software Engineering Unions as a necessary part of a functioning society though.
That's not what we were talking about, but alright.
Not sure how it works in the US, but from what I read you can't be forced to join a union there. But I think I get what you mean: once you work in a given place, there's usually not much choice which union you can join (or which will represent you in any case), and your only option is to change employer, location or career.
I understand that point of view, but I don't think it's a good argument. Employers also organize and wield their influence in ways that you seem to resent in unions. Don't like it? You have the same choices as above. (I don't think people should be forced into unions; I just think your argument is not anti-union, or at least cannot be fairly applied to single them out.)
The difference seems to be that the employer pays you and treats you well enough that you think you won't benefit from a union. Good for you! Hope it stays that way.
>once you work in a given place, there's usually not much choice which union you can join (or which will represent you in any case), and your only option is to change employer, location or career.
Unions are generally democratic, too, so there's also the option of voting for different union reps (or volunteering to be a rep) in order to change the union's policy or how the union works.
They quite literally are not, at least not in the US; half the states have right-to-work laws that prohibit this explicitly, and there are likely some protections even in the states that don't have a blanket protection.
There are many unions in the US. My partner is a member of a union and has much better healthcare and, overall, a better benefit package than I do. They work at the state university.
So? Unions also bought and influenced media outlets. They also lobbied. It's not like unions just sat there while management poisoned the country's mind against unions.
Unions were not able to make a compelling case. They had every chance to do so, starting with them being the default option in many industries.
America abandoned unions for a reason. It may have taken a concerted effort by corporate capitalists to get there, but that's not why. "Why" is because more and more people felt that the unions were not a net positive for them.
It can be the case that people didn't feel that unions were a net positive from the 1960s~2000s and now, starting from somewhere in the late 2010s, have begun reconsidering whether unions are net positive. All that needs to change is conditions altering which make unions seem to be a net positive.
Sure. It can even be the case that unions were a net positive before 1960, too. It can even be the case that the gains achieved by the unions are what made conditions less terrible from ~1960 to ~2000, and that the absence of the unions is what allowed conditions to get worse after 2000. (I don't think that's the whole story, but it's a defensible reading of events...)
