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> Tragedy of the commons. Whether or not the dues are “reasonable”, they’re not nothing. And as long as union and nonunion employees are paid the same, as an in
by chimeracoder 8y ago
> Tragedy of the commons. Whether or not the dues are “reasonable”, they’re not nothing. And as long as union and nonunion employees are paid the same, as an individual employee, leaving the union lets you save that money without giving anything else up in return.
This is a common talking point based on a factually incorrect premise.
There's no reason union and non-union employees would necessarily be paid the same, because there's no reason the unions have to include non-members in the bargaining unit.
They are perfectly free to establish contracts that only cover employees who join the union.
- comex 8y agoI was replying in the context of frgtpsswrdlame's post stating that employers had an incentive to pay nonunion members the same as union members, at least in the short term. (pc86 responded to that post asking "If your dues are reasonable why would anyone leave?", and I responded to them.) In reality, there's no guarantee an employer would do this, and in theory the union could even negotiate to make sure it didn't – but it would have a pretty hard time justifying to its members why it was trying to keep other people's wages down. And in lieu of such negotiations, the larger the fraction of union employees, the less the employer has to lose by bumping nonunion employees' wages to match theirs, with the goal of ultimately weakening the union.
- chimeracoder 8y ago> but it would have a pretty hard time justifying to its members why it was trying to keep other [non-member] people's wages down. They seem to have no trouble with that already at present.
- comex 8y agoPlease explain.