> We are free to change the perceived value of workers through the power of worker solidarity
It's more like using the power of government to ensure the company has no alternative to the union.
Company leaders have no actual power over the workers. They cannot force anyone to come to work. They cannot have you arrested. They cannot confiscate your property. They cannot beat you. They cannot prevent you from accepting a job at another company. They cannot prevent you from leaving. They cannot extort, libel, slander, blackmail, or threaten you. They cannot put a hit on you.
All they can do is offer you money in exchange for your labor. That's it.
Having control of money is power. A kind of power that everyone needs, and many workers (who are typically poorer than company leaders) don’t have secure access to.
Which means they can prevent you from utilizing the skills you have, forcing you to start from the bottom. How is this not an extremely lopsided power akin to preventing you from working? In general people will keep quiet to keep making the same money to support their family, etc
This seems like a bad faith reading of the english sentence here. The phrase "every other company" was not used. Obviously they can depress the value of worker's wages as a whole if they can prevent you from working at the competition - because a worker with a specific skill set will be best utilized at companies which are in the same field, and so generally in competition with one another.
Really?? I've lived and worked in Massachusetts and Washington, both states with very strong support for non-competes, prior to living in California, and, as a skilled worker (bachelors and masters degrees in computer science, mba, many years experience in tech) I've not had trouble working in many companies that don't compete with each other. And even in companies that do, as long as I wasn't working in directly competitive parts. And I've had collectively hundreds of thousands of colleagues who've also created careers across companies.
I mean, I'm in California so my employer can't prevent me from taking a competing job, but the contract does cover starting a business in your free time and they definitely seem to think doing anything on a computer competes with them.
> It's more like using the power of government to ensure the company has no alternative to the union.
Unions absolutely do not need the government to exist. It is only through government attempts to control and curtail unions that the government has involved itself in unions.
See for example the Taft-Hartley act:
What makes you say that? The Taft Hartley act I linked to significantly weakened union power in this country. In other countries like Germany unions have much more power and representation.
Yes, it does, in each scenario you presented.
> We are free to change the perceived value of workers through the power of worker solidarity
It's more like using the power of government to ensure the company has no alternative to the union.
Company leaders have no actual power over the workers. They cannot force anyone to come to work. They cannot have you arrested. They cannot confiscate your property. They cannot beat you. They cannot prevent you from accepting a job at another company. They cannot prevent you from leaving. They cannot extort, libel, slander, blackmail, or threaten you. They cannot put a hit on you.
All they can do is offer you money in exchange for your labor. That's it.