> Fascinating that German unions sometimes have managers as members. Of course! From a theory perspective, it's completely clear: just because capital gives so

> Fascinating that German unions sometimes have managers as members. Of course! From a theory perspective, it's completely clear: just because capital gives some workers a mediocum of power over other workers doesn't mean that those managers suddenly have different interests than the people they lead. They still need to sell their labour to survive, after all. > Are those members ostracized by the real workers? So much for theory. In the real world, bad managers exist everywhere. In union shops, they are probably reigned in much more than elsewhere, because they quickly find themselves in mediation meetings between workers, union and management every time their workers realize that they actually do have rights, and that those are violated by management frequently. Those guys are ostracised, whether they have a membership card or not. But yeah, managers can easily get into situations where their own performance metrics would suffer if they follow union directives, so conflict of interests are not uncommon. Just like humans everywhere, they somehow live with the cognitive dissonance. As an example, I worked in a production plant where the floor boss would go through quite a bit of paperwork to hire scabs from a temp agency during union strikes, because missing production deadlines was unthinkable to him. Normally a pro-union guy, glad to take the union-negotiated salary increases, not a bad boss, but seeing that his production lines never stopped was his job, and so he did just that.