> We shouldn't pretend what a union wants is what every one of its members wants. We shouldn't pretend that what a union wants is arbitrarily disjointed from t

> We shouldn't pretend what a union wants is what every one of its members wants. We shouldn't pretend that what a union wants is arbitrarily disjointed from the individual interests of its members, either. Every collective has the potential to depart from individual preferences in some way. How much that happens varies in practice. And it's pretty likely that your employment agreements are not an exception, even if you've arrived at them without any collective work on your side. > Leaving at-will firings on the table for instance is unlikely to garner popular support. This assumes the only incentive for joining a union is ultimate job security. That's a popular anti-union conception, but that doesn't make it correct. Any popular benefit that is not commonly conferred could provide a cohesion point for collective bargaining. > I personally don't want specific severance requirements for those fired, otherwise you end up with defacto unfire-able situations because you've artificially increased the cost to remove a bad employee. Increasing the cost of something is very different from making it defacto impossible. Though it is one way of providing an incentive against doing something arbitrarily. And it's not clear a negotiated price for firing would be any more "artificial" than any other negotiated price, up to and including your salary. > I don't want to force them to run their company a certain way by rule, I'll just voice displeasure and leave if necessary. That's pretty much how unions work. It just turns out to have more leverage if you multiply it by the size of the participating workforce. > Due to the vast differences in employer packages and the freedom of choice given to the employee in the current demand-heavy market Again, the freedom of individually negotiated compensation can co-exist with collective bargaining. A sibling comment even points out examples.