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You're right, it's just anecdata, but literally I have a dozen stories like that and almost (not quite) zero countervailing stories. My experience with unions

You're right, it's just anecdata, but literally I have a dozen stories like that and almost (not quite) zero countervailing stories. My experience with unions is that they start out with noble intentions, and then within a generation or two of union leaders devolve into just serving themselves; meanwhile, management suffers with worse and worse employees, because they can't do anything to get rid of the bad apples. Over time, the bad apples bring in more bad apples and things get progressively worse. That can happen in a non-union company, too, but then it'll get punished by the market. It's really a question of misaligned incentives; the union reps have no incentive to do anything to help the company, and often have incentives to do the exact opposite, like initiate a strike at the worst possible time.

lovich 5y ago
The unions have just as much an incentive to help the company as the company has to help the workers. Both will have nothing without the other so they can’t extract 100% of the value, but they do want to maximize their take. What I don’t get from your comments is why you think unions are bad because they can have bad actors, but are ignoring that the company’s bad behavior doesn’t go away if the union does. And this happens even for well compensated roles. Look at examples like when Apple, google, and a few other companies entered into a cartel agreement to suppress engineer wages.
- gunapologist99 5y ago
  > Look at examples like when Apple, google, and a few other companies entered into a cartel agreement to suppress engineer wages. Wasn't that already illegal? Did unions help?
  - lovich 5y ago
    The unions didn’t exist so how could they have helped?
    - gunapologist99 5y ago
      That's kinda the point. How did it get resolved? Through a class-action lawsuit from 60,000 employees across all of the involved companies. No union was needed.

lovich 5y ago

The unions have just as much an incentive to help the company as the company has to help the workers. Both will have nothing without the other so they can’t extract 100% of the value, but they do want to maximize their take. What I don’t get from your comments is why you think unions are bad because they can have bad actors, but are ignoring that the company’s bad behavior doesn’t go away if the union does. And this happens even for well compensated roles. Look at examples like when Apple, google, and a few other companies entered into a cartel agreement to suppress engineer wages.

gunapologist99 5y ago
> Look at examples like when Apple, google, and a few other companies entered into a cartel agreement to suppress engineer wages. Wasn't that already illegal? Did unions help?
- lovich 5y ago
  The unions didn’t exist so how could they have helped?
  - gunapologist99 5y ago
    That's kinda the point. How did it get resolved? Through a class-action lawsuit from 60,000 employees across all of the involved companies. No union was needed.