>>You can have unions without the government mandating anything. Unions have no power in a free market, which is why unionization rates were so low until the u

>>You can have unions without the government mandating anything. Unions have no power in a free market, which is why unionization rates were so low until the unions successfully hoodwinked society into believing their victim narrative, and had the government pass laws in their favor. >>Here's an example: I know I'm worth considerably more to my employer than they're paying me, but were I to ask for appropriate compensation they'd rather let me go than pay up - because it would set a bad precedent. Any other employer I could turn to would do the same. Or they could pay you more and require that you to not disclose your pay raise to co-workers. If they don't pay market wages, their employees will resign to work for companies that do. There's no trick that companies can use to avoid paying market wages. Supply and demand are the dominant forces in determining wage levels, as centuries of empirical evidence shows. The free market is quite efficient, and as a consequence, laws that violate it typically reduce efficiency. EDIT, being rate limited so will respond to the below here: >>There's also no such thing as laws forcing employers to negotiate with unions Collective bargaining laws do precisely this. In the US, if the majority of a work unit votes to unionize, the company employing them MUST engage in collective bargaining with the entire work unit, and cannot fire them and replace them with workers who are not unionized. This basic violation of contract liberty is characterized by mainstream academia and so-called civil liberties organizations like the ACLU, in Orwellian fashion, as a human right, and has become institutionalized around the world. >>Because I've got a history book full of examples that say otherwise - of unions/guilds mattering even when facing opposition from the government. The power of guilds came entirely from government! The defining characteristic of a guild was an association of market providers who were granted, by government authorities, a market monopoly, to the exclusion of market providers not party to the guild.