It has to do with size. On one end of the spectrum, there is unions which represent just a single company. On the other end of the spectrum there are governments that represent the consumers (and workers in theory) of an entire country.
In the middle between the two extremes tend to be where the local maxima is. The ideal setup is industry wide governmental organizations and industry wide unions, so there is a fast food union that regulates the price all fast food companies pay their workers, an industry minimum wage instead of a global minimum wage. This is how Switzerland does it, and it works quite well. This way different industries get tailored results for their workers and businesses that works best for them. Likewise, because all companies have to follow these regulations, new non-union companies can't swoop in and undercut the older unionized companies running them out of business, which is what happened in the US and one of the reasons we have so few unions today.
In this ideal setup there is industry wide governments representing consumers, so there is a fast food government that works on food regulations for customers. These governments have a larger federal government that passes guidelines smaller governments can follow. So eg, there is a country wide FDA that sets guidelines, and each kind of smaller government can choose to follow it or modify it as necessary to meet their specific situation.
However, for this to work, customers exclusively need to be represented in the government, not businesses. Likewise, for this to work unions need to be represented by just the workers.
There has to be a way to balance the demands of the workers vs the demands of the customers vs the demands of the businesses. If business fail over this, it's not handled well, so there needs to be some sort of pro business oversight as well (usually handled by a court system of some sort, but it doesn't have to be handled this way). For this to work properly there has to be severe limits and regulations on the power of unions and governmental organizations. Too much power to unions and goverments and businesses are restricted, which can be harmful to the larger economic economy, similar to how fishermen are limited in how many fish they can catch to not squash the ecosystem. Because of this there needs to be a government for businesses, eg minimum profit margin laws and what not. Workers and consumers can not milk the cow to its death, it needs to be healthy and happy too, so much so others are inspired to create a business.
This kind of system does exist today, in part in many European countries. Switzerland and Nordic countries are the closest. The only difference is governments are based on party, and those larger governments have strong power over smaller industry regulators. If the larger government has too much power over industry regulators it opens the door for corruption. There needs to be a balance of power to hit a local maxima.
In the middle between the two extremes tend to be where the local maxima is. The ideal setup is industry wide governmental organizations and industry wide unions, so there is a fast food union that regulates the price all fast food companies pay their workers, an industry minimum wage instead of a global minimum wage. This is how Switzerland does it, and it works quite well. This way different industries get tailored results for their workers and businesses that works best for them. Likewise, because all companies have to follow these regulations, new non-union companies can't swoop in and undercut the older unionized companies running them out of business, which is what happened in the US and one of the reasons we have so few unions today.
In this ideal setup there is industry wide governments representing consumers, so there is a fast food government that works on food regulations for customers. These governments have a larger federal government that passes guidelines smaller governments can follow. So eg, there is a country wide FDA that sets guidelines, and each kind of smaller government can choose to follow it or modify it as necessary to meet their specific situation.
However, for this to work, customers exclusively need to be represented in the government, not businesses. Likewise, for this to work unions need to be represented by just the workers.
There has to be a way to balance the demands of the workers vs the demands of the customers vs the demands of the businesses. If business fail over this, it's not handled well, so there needs to be some sort of pro business oversight as well (usually handled by a court system of some sort, but it doesn't have to be handled this way). For this to work properly there has to be severe limits and regulations on the power of unions and governmental organizations. Too much power to unions and goverments and businesses are restricted, which can be harmful to the larger economic economy, similar to how fishermen are limited in how many fish they can catch to not squash the ecosystem. Because of this there needs to be a government for businesses, eg minimum profit margin laws and what not. Workers and consumers can not milk the cow to its death, it needs to be healthy and happy too, so much so others are inspired to create a business.
This kind of system does exist today, in part in many European countries. Switzerland and Nordic countries are the closest. The only difference is governments are based on party, and those larger governments have strong power over smaller industry regulators. If the larger government has too much power over industry regulators it opens the door for corruption. There needs to be a balance of power to hit a local maxima.