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In Norway, each employee freely chooses their union. It is common in some industries that people belong to several different unions, and that some are not part

In Norway, each employee freely chooses their union. It is common in some industries that people belong to several different unions, and that some are not part of union. And usually they are based on particular profession, like engineering or economics. Unions then have more a passive role, offering services like free legal representation, better insurance deals, and training. Only some areas like teachers seem to have near-homogeneous membership and unions taking an active role. And this seems mostly to be because 90% have the same employeer - the state (public education). Because of standardized working terms (incl salary), they have to be negotiated centrally.

criddell 8y ago
Why does there have to be standard working terms? In the US professional baseball, hockey, and football have player unions and things like salary are negotiated per person.
- SimonPStevens 8y ago
  They aren't standard working terms because of the unions. They are standard working terms because all teachers (who work in state schools at least) are employed by the local education authorities, who in turn set their working terms and salaries based on the government's department for education. So for teachers there is no individual salary negotiation, it's all decided centrally by the government and you either take it, or move to the private schools of which there are a lot less. (This is UK for me, but based on what op said, I think it's similar)
  - Aeolun 8y ago
    This is not to say that individual teachers cannot earn more or less, just that the scale on which they are being paid has been decided in advance, right?
  - jononor 8y ago
    Yep very similar. There is built in some automatic compensation for years of service, and the payscale is inflation adjusted. For a given position, there is a small range of possible salaries. So it is in principle possible to have a bit of independently negotiated salary. In practice almost everyone falls very close to each-other.
- LanceH 8y ago
  Percentage of revenue going to the players has already been negotiated. It should also be noted that the players union represents a tiny portion of the actual employees involved and they actively negotiate money away from other employees.

criddell 8y ago

Why does there have to be standard working terms? In the US professional baseball, hockey, and football have player unions and things like salary are negotiated per person.

SimonPStevens 8y ago
They aren't standard working terms because of the unions. They are standard working terms because all teachers (who work in state schools at least) are employed by the local education authorities, who in turn set their working terms and salaries based on the government's department for education. So for teachers there is no individual salary negotiation, it's all decided centrally by the government and you either take it, or move to the private schools of which there are a lot less. (This is UK for me, but based on what op said, I think it's similar)
- Aeolun 8y ago
  This is not to say that individual teachers cannot earn more or less, just that the scale on which they are being paid has been decided in advance, right?
- jononor 8y ago
  Yep very similar. There is built in some automatic compensation for years of service, and the payscale is inflation adjusted. For a given position, there is a small range of possible salaries. So it is in principle possible to have a bit of independently negotiated salary. In practice almost everyone falls very close to each-other.
LanceH 8y ago
Percentage of revenue going to the players has already been negotiated. It should also be noted that the players union represents a tiny portion of the actual employees involved and they actively negotiate money away from other employees.