They did collude. It was done in secret because it was illegal. It was fixed by the government, no unions required. Nor could one have helped. A union would not

They did collude. It was done in secret because it was illegal. It was fixed by the government, no unions required. Nor could one have helped. A union would not have fixed that unless it had developed some mechanism to discover the conspiracy via other means than the ones the government used. In fact to claim a union could have avoided this situation is backwards: unions create cross-firm wage fixing agreements as part of their core policy goals. The facts are that white collar employees that are union members have higher pay[2] Averaged across all industries, yes: because they engage in industry-wide wage fixing. That's great if you can't command a high rate yourself, sucks if you can as you're chopped down to their level. But we're not talking about all industries, we're talking about the tech industry. And if you compare the tech industry vs other industries, there are no unions (except this one) and there are high wages.