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From what I have seen it’s mostly management that gets greedy first.

• bluGill 7y ago
  Who was first doesn't change the fact that unions are sometimes unreasonable. Though I have to say most companies I've seen with evil unions have management that deserves the worst a union can do. I've seen cases of good management with bad unions harming everybody (except the union leaders), but they are generally rare.
  • K0SM0S 7y ago
    You guys should come see how it's done in France, where it's appaling to witness all the bad faith and disingenuosity from both sides — because the regulation is so tight that both sides feel righteous and untouchable, so to speak. The truth is that ~7% of French workers were unionized last I checked — a dysmal failure for these associations, an all-time low that's been true for decades. And yet they take the right to block the whole country on issue X or Y because, well, they're official unions protected by the law. They are systemically funded by regulation, like social security or any other de facto 'tax'. I would generally claim that in very different ways, the French and Americans are just as bad at unions — totally fails the point and disturbs (destroys, even) much more than it creates. I've heard great things about the German approach, but I can't substantiate first-hand. It's portrayed as a great synergy between management and unions to increase the value of the company as a whole while redistributing wealth (whether money, time, privileges...) in a fair manner. It's no rocket science either to treat everyone well, which tells you how uncooperative human beings can become when circle-jerking too hard (we are biologically, socially very protective of "our own" and very hostile to "others", the question being where each of us puts the limit).