Unions are not a bad idea; they're just tackling an impossible problem. The economics literature in the 1960's and 70's proved that employees will be largely u

Unions are not a bad idea; they're just tackling an impossible problem. The economics literature in the 1960's and 70's proved that employees will be largely unable to capture the benefit of increased productivity due to excess coordination costs relative to owners -- even when unions try to address those costs. The intractibility of the problem, ironically, stems from laws protecting the free enterprise of the employee, which increase coordination costs. No one wants to lose those freedoms. So there's no more reason to believe unions will work now than to believe that more hardware will always fix scaling issues. The actual solution has been outsourcing - for the outsourcing firm (OF). At scale they have negotiating leverage, particularly over time as a company becomes dependent on them. That has lead to a huge shift in wage benefits from the US to India and China et. al in IT. It works so long at the OF employee has no better alternative, but it's still the OF owner who gets the lion's share of the benefit (witness India's richest men). Everyone plays this game, some better than others. Apple is fully outsourced for manufacturing, but their iPhone production line take ~1400 workers, while Android's take ~100. So Apple is much "nicer" in this world, but operates within its constraints. Businesses who ignore these constraints don't survive and don't get funded. To get power, you have to own something - tangible or IP - that someone else will pay a lot for. That's the only solution. MBA's and JD's exist only to make sure that when you do, you don't give it away -- or they take it from you.