I'm pretty sure this is what bosses and major corporate unions will tell you, but i don't think it's so simple... at least as long as you have provisions that m

I'm pretty sure this is what bosses and major corporate unions will tell you, but i don't think it's so simple... at least as long as you have provisions that make it illegal for a boss to fire someone on the basis of their union activities as we do here in France (although they still do, and it takes years to get compensation through special tribunals). First, because the boss has no idea whether you're gonna join an union before you're actually employed, unless you tell them to their face. Second, because having a single major union goes against workers best interests by adding gatekeepers (the union leaders) who have interests in keeping the status quo and putting away proposals deemed too radical. Second, because it's a useful construct to demonize unions. As you can see here on HN, lots of people in the US (i don't think this is true elsewhere) have examples of stupid union-mandated rules that apply to everybody. As long as the boss makes the rules, we're all happy to be against the boss for their soulless management. But when stupid rules are proposed and enforced by the single union, it's very convenient to keep everyone divided and not looking at who's profiting from the situation. All in all, the single union appears to be a manipulation by the bosses themselves, or by the more authoritarian stalinist components of the workforce, and i don't see any benefits to it. Maybe i'm being a bit conspirational about it, but it sounds really at odds with the history of unionism all across the planet, for example the IWW in the USA which was the biggest union for i reckon a few decades, promoting sabotage and expropriation of the bosses alongside workers self-organization. Voting for some stuff can be useful, though. In France it's common for people as individuals to go on a strike, but when it's part of a more global social movement, "joining the general strike" is usually put to a vote, as a measurement of the workers agreeing that everything needs to change and production should be entirely halted, and the workplace blocked. But voting or having a majority should never prevent people to struggle for emancipation.