I wonder why US companies keep pulling stunts like this despite the data showing little negative impact of unionization to overall productivity nor company survival.
It looks to be a purely dogmatic ego trip where somehow blind loyalty is demanded even when it's not actually necessary.
Nobody wants to admit it, but businesses are deeply ideological. Not in the typical sense, but they have lots of strongly held irrational beliefs that are contradictory. They are not rational actors.
Management is deeply ideological more so than people working. Was in an IT union for over 10 years. I can't speak to how great the union was for worker issues - I was told to my face I "had a religious problem" by a manger and the union wasn't able to do much. Management also repeated "don't document" and again the union really couldn't do much. After repeatedly told not to document work I got a pocket recorder so I could talk to myself and document later on my own time. Then mgmt fired me and when I cleaned out my things I didn't find that pocket recorder. Since I was no longer an employee I told by union rep that my pocket recorder may still be at work and to watch out for it.
The next morning the union rep met with me to deliver a letter from HR to sign saying I resigned - that was all that was in it. The union rep and mgmt knew about the 'your religious problem' verbal warning I got from that meeting with a manager - the other person at that meeting was writing something down and didn't hear it and when I asked the manager what he meant by that and he clammed up. Smart move really.
So if anything the after work relationship with the union reps who could still act on my behalf helped out. Other people there were not comfortable to interact with me on anything work related at that point. Notable is that I'm not religious in any way, but was insistent that documenting work was a necessity. That was while working for a state university.
Unions don't work if the people you vote to represent you in the union aren't willing to do the job they've lobbied for. Too many people see their union responsibilities as optional and just want the position for the small additional pay or for the prestige of the role.
I’m not even sure that it is irrational exactly. The owners of a company want to believe and behave as if they own the company. Its their toy to do with as they please.
Unionization changes the fundamental facts of ownership. The owner no longer do as they please, they must consult the representatives of their labor force.
That is a fundamental shift in how the business operates and the rights that the owners enjoy
Who doesn’t want to admit that? Businesses are groups of people. Is there anyone in the world who says large groups are perfectly rational?
A well-managed business tries to focus on profitability as opposed to, say, picking up horseback riding as a hobby. But the way profits are pursued is absolutely irrational and chaotic. Does anyone believe otherwise?
At a meta level, if your government isn't particularly pro-union (and one side is rabidly anti-union with the potential for them to be in charge for the next four years), and you are to some extent hostage to governmental fortune (cf the current lawsuits against Apple, the reliance on outsourcing to China, etc.) there's probably a certain amount of political sense in being seen to be anti-union Just In Case.
I recall a graph that Yale prof Ian Shapiro showed in his lecture series "Power and Politics in Today’s World" (available on YouTube) that shows a strong correlation between participation fall in worker unions and wage stagnation as opposed to corporation profits in the US. The break point is the fall of the Berlin wall. IIRC he goes on to explain how's that not an accident.
More seriously: Any analysis which ignores globalization and skirting of environmental and labor laws by importing from China is an incomplete/dishonest analysis.
Wage stagnation also correlates to importing from China.
Next to losing control, executives care little about overall productivity. CEOs are constantly micromanaging HR to pull levers and manipulate employees. It's so second-nature they don't even consider any other possibilities. They don't want to lose that control.
There's nothing magical about a union, at the end of the day it's people working towards a common goal and it's only as good as the people in it who make it happen. If it's you and a few of your coworkers who are learning to work together and strategize towards common goals while you prepare for marching on the boss to try and make change, it will be a good organization. If it's a bunch of greedy cops who joined the police force because they have a power complex, it's going to be the same when they all get together too.
In what sense aren't police labor? "Labor" literally just means "work"? It's not like the unions of managers, pilots, lawyers, NHL players or software developers aren't "labor unions"? Policemen are employed so their organization as employees is a labor union (or just "union" for short)?
"Labor" isn't being used in the sense of just "someone who does work". It's being used in the sense of one of the sides in class warfare. Police generally work on the side of management rather than the side of labor therefore they aren't labor in the sense being spoken about.
Note that solidarity is an important principle in the labor movement. So the fact that police the police might act as "labor" in their personal negotiations with management isn't considered to make them part of "labor" in the general sense; because they don't show solidarity with other unions.
Think of it in terms of regular warfare. Just because two nations separately fight the same country in different wars doesn't make them allies. They are only allies if they support each other in wars against that other country.
I’m actually with the parent — police are administrative, like judges and building inspectors.
I don’t have a fully formed opinion, but I think there is something wrong with unions for government functions. Unions are good because they allow a large number of weak stakeholders to band together to negotiate with a powerful business.
But governments aren’t businesses and don’t have the ruthless profit motive companies do, so I think government unions have too much bargaining power against the very diffuse stakeholders of a government. Police unions especially seem to exist more to avoid accountability than to further wages and working conditions.
I guess I would say that “labor” in the union context is in contrast to “shareholder”, and governments and their employees just don’t work that way.
Police are what shows up when labor strikes. They’re part of the government, not a part of the collective “labor” that is the rest of the working world. As an example, police are part of an association but not a union. They aren’t legally allowed to strike anywhere in the US. They serve the interests of capitalism, which is the other side of the coin of workers’ rights
there's lots of other benefits (for cops) for joining, also the general vibe with police work in the US is that if you're not on board, you're going to get harassed and threatened (and rarely assaulted/murdered) until you leave (see: thin blue line)
There's an important distinction because a police "union" is in opposition to any other workers and unions. The police are the tools of capital, they break up strikes. The cops aren't going to join you in a sympathy strike.
I don't think that's a useful definition. Laws may require employers from negotiating everything from working hours to safety with unions. Some countries have laws that require unions have voting power in company boards etc.
When it comes to employee vs employer, they are employed just like everyone else and can have disputes with their employer just like everyone else. They are on their own side. If police want to end single person patrols for safety concerns, or want a minimum number of hours rest between shifts, that's what their union would be for. It doesn't look any different when it's police vs. teachers in that case.
This comes of as ahistorical to me (as an american at least). Every significant moment in the US labor movement came down to workers vs. police, it's not like the robber barons were shooting the miners, steelworkers, etc. themselves
The unspoken thing about cops is that, yes, they surely care about vacation time, working hours, healthcare. And, yes, they are probably just as much victims of liberal economic austerity and such as the broader workforce. And, yes, its even not that much of stretch to call their labor "productive" (in the Marxist sense) considering how much money they extract from the population they are "serving" (only speaking for the U.S. here).
But regardless, even if they are struggling to pay rent or save for their child's college, they are singularly compensated by the one thing almost as valuable as money in our world: bare authority.
But its a bitter reward! Spiritually unhealthy. Forever opposed to everyone around them, specifically trained to think as such. Which is why, imo, we see huge numbers of them suffering from PTSD, committing suicide, engaging in domestic violence...
The movement that gave rise to the term is hardly relevant for who uses it today. Labor union means "employee organization". Do the police call their union "union" but not "labor union"? That's just a language thing then (The two terms aren't separated in my language - I always assumed that in English "union" was short for "labor union")
I'm struggling with what you meant by "it's just a language thing", that is of course true and what I was pointing out. For the purpose of good communication, everything is a language thing and language things are important.
When we say "the police union isn't a labor union", we're people rejecting them from the classification even though they use the word because we don't think they fit in with our values. That's because we have labor (movement) values. You could also talk about any group of employees getting together and acting towards a common goal and call that a union, or a labor union, that wouldn't mean that everyone else automatically means the same thing. In this case, the poster didn't mean that.
> I'm struggling with what you meant by "it's just a language thing", that is of course true and what I was pointing out. For the purpose of good communication, everything is a language thing and language things are important.
Ok fair enough. In english there is a distinction between just "Union" and "labor union". And under this distinction, a police union would not be a labor union. Language is important.
Moving beyond language though, I can't see where the distinction is important e.g. legally or ethically - which is perhaps why the distinction has disappeared or never existed in some other languages.
It's curious - perhaps related - that in English the difference between "salary" and "wages" also remains and is even relevant in some parts of the market.
The distinction can matter because the core purposes of the two are different. A "Labor" union is one that represents one side of the relationship between capital and the workforce: that is, the side that has a portion of the value it creates in its work extracted by the other.
It exists fundamentally in order to be able to collectively negotiate around the amount of that value extracted and attempt to retain more for those who create it. That in doing so it also establishes workers' rights, policies around treatment etc is a nice to have.
The police, as an extension of state power much like the army, are generally understood to be broadly on the "side" of capital (in capitalist states). They are not value-creating, and their "unions" have nothing to negotiate for a share of. This is why you'll more often see them represented as "associations" or "federations", much like civil service, nursing or fire service staff bodies. Their goal is simply to argue for better terms and conditions for their members.
Does the distinction practically matter? In many cases, no. When the interests of capital or the state are at stake, yes: police officers will break up labor union strikes, even when those officers are members of a federation. They are fundamentally not part of the same movement.
> It's curious - perhaps related - that in English the difference between "salary" and "wages" also remains and is even relevant in some parts of the market.
This is a useful distinction, and I'm mildly surprised it doesn't show up in your native language. A salary is fixed compensation for full-time labor: the employee is expected to work during (usually) business hours, in exchange for a contractually-agreed amount of money.
Wages are hourly: the employee works when scheduled, and is paid an agreed amount for each hour they work.
By the way I feel the need to share that despite this conversation, somewhere between few and no Americans distinguish between "union" and "labor union". This is the first time I've seen the difference and I believe those who are making this point are downplaying the fact that in common language these are used entirely interchangeably.
Not saying I disagree or agree with their point, but that this rhetorical method of argument by definition doesn't match reality.
Article is about US company violating US labor guards so yeah my comment really only applies to the US labor movement. Can't speak to Red Guard don't really know anything about them
What are they if they're not "labor"? Certainly a police officer considers their upcoming shift as "work". Certainly the police could not function without on-duty officers on patrol and at the precinct?
I hate to be so blunt on this site, but what is the flippin point of these sort of definitional and semantic arguments? What are you trying to gain, other than muddying the waters of conversations. I legitimately don't see how any position, yours or otherwise, benefits from this rhetorical approach.
> What are you trying to gain, other than muddying the waters of conversations
How does enhanced clarity muddy the waters? Police are not labor, not practically or legally. Likewise, a CEO is not labor either, even though the CEO is apt to be an employee who shows up to work just like anyone else. Having a job that you go to work at is not what defines labor in this context. Considering all people who do work to be the same is what muddies the waters here.
How is a police officer like a CEO, and not like a factory line worker? It seems very clear that they are more the latter (labor) than the former (admin).
> How is a police officer like a CEO, and not like a factory line worker?
Both the police and CEOs are incentivized to protect the interest of capitalists. That is a primary duty of their job. Labor, on the other hand, challenges the interests of capitalists.
> It seems very clear that they are more the latter (labor) than the former (admin).
Clear in what way? Where there are people there are people problems. Indeed, police often have associations to help with people problems, hell even the capitalists sometimes have unions (e.g. farmers), but these are not labor unions. If this is what you are talking about, there is nothing clear about it – it is all quite arbitrary who gets to associate and who doesn't, but is also beyond the topic at hand.
Fair enough. We still have significant disagreements but I appreciate this response because I at least now understand your position. Apologies for pressing you on this.
I have no position. I only take interest in relaying the state of the world. This is how labor is classified in said world. You will notice that in most jurisdictions, police, not considered labor, are not allowed to form true labor unions. In fact, where they are able to associate, the union is usually formally known as a "Police Association", or similar variant, so that it is not confused with a labor union.
I am not sure how you can disagree with the state of the world. Said state may be relayed with error, perhaps, but recognizing an error in transmission isn't disagreement. Besides, if I had a position, it would be in bad faith to share it anyway.
Ok, I was trying to be polite. Not everyone has such an academic definition of "labor", and I literally didn't know that police unions weren't categorized like the other public sector unions. In general, saying that police are not "labor" is a position, even if it's the obviously correct one.
Why would it be bad faith to share your position? Also
With even a basic history of labor power under capitalism it's clear that police are one of the greatest threats to organozed workers due to their role enforcing the capitalist status quo.
In the US police are often members of a union, and collaborate with the strikers, causing companies to hire professional security companies. Honestly, I have a hard time feeling much compassion for companies where the workforce unionizes: most of the time unionization is a relic of terrible management behavior over a substantial period of time.
I personally believe companies are given way too much credit in being considered rational pure-profit motive actors. They're far worse than that (a rational pure-profit motive actor is also bad because it would inevitably select for slavery): they're typically run by extremely conservative, often ivy-league people (if not in alma mater, then in worship of ivy league culture). These people are trained from the get go to associate unions with everything antithetical to their cult heroes of people like Ford or Edison. Once in an argument with a similarly minded founder, he dropped the line on me, "unions are anti-capitalist," which to me really reveals the mindset that to at least him, negotiating from positions of equal power is not capitalism.
What you are describing is the ascendency of a new third class of people in capitalist systems: the managerial class. Where once you had labourer and capitalist you now increasingly have people with real power derived from their positions within large private organisations and not derived from their direct ownership of capital
I think mostly because they think it's potentially detrimental. And the financial consequences of doing illegal things to fight unions are substantially lower than their perception of what unions might cost them.
Like from this article..."The board cannot impose fines or direct punishments against Apple for its violations".
A lot of large companies like to have standardized policies across the company so they can shuffle people where ever they need and everything is the same. Unions are usually location by location and often only cover a specific classification of the employees in a location (manufacturing, warehouse, maintenance, sanitation, and/or truck drivers), and each union will bargain on its own so you can have a single location running with multiple unique union contracts for each classification of employee. This is a PITA to manage for big slow corporations who would need teams of lawyers and HR people working thru and negotiating each contract individually and getting approvals from above.
Yep but that's again a dogmatic view as there is hints that anti-unionization measures are the kind of cost cutting that kills companies rather then the kind that makes them huge successes.
In companies with a healthy culture, maybe. But if staff unionizes, how's Amazon going to make them pee in a bottle to squeeze out a few more deliveries, without running into trouble with the union. I'm sure other companies have their own terrible anecdotes.
I've been involved with an IT union for 15 years of my career, i don't know how the data shows there's little negative impact... it's a catastrophic mess from what I've seen
It has more to do with US politics - both the major US political parties lean to the right- and allowing unions encourages socialist ideas that obviously clash with the ideas of the political right. Unions can (and do) become powerful political blocs which means that political parties then have to try to entrench themselves in it to retain some level of influence. But that also means they also have to actually listen to their concerns and politically deliver on some of them, to retain their influence. This can lead to a dilution of the ideology of the politically right, which some politicians and businessmen do consider as a political threat.
Read up on primate behavior. Top executives are alpha males, and didn't get there without lots of compulsive control-seeking, dominance-asserting, etc. behavior patterns.
>This is not accurate at all and really has very little place in rational discussion.
I wouldn't phrase it that way at all, but it has been a studied phenomenon that C-level positions have disproportionately more individuals with psychopathic tendencies.
Executives are still just a function of their masters above them, i.e., chief executives, investors, pension funds, governments, lobbyists/donors, bond holders/bankers (in that order). Executives are just functionaries, the literal managerial class or minor nobility as we know it by from the past.
Those behaviors you describe have clearly shifted somewhat in the last years for very specific reasons that the system has determined that, e.g., “DEI” is more profitable and also cedes more power and control to the top, so they’ve been working hard to put in place the more profitable and beneficial structure, and the minor nobility we call executives, have been quick to implement the King’s wishes, as they’ve come down from the Dukes and the Earls, among slick presentations and videos with upbeat audio from professional propagandists called PR firms.
Great question. Ledt assume that you’re discussing a topic like working hours. Your company says you have to work. 14h each day, and you argue that if you have to do that, you’ll be sleep deprived, make mistakes and be so low productivity that it wouldn’t benefit the company, especially since they would have to pay you more with a constant hourly wage than if you worked fewer hours and was more productive.
The company argues: “STFU pessent, you’ll work when we say, how long we say and exactly how we say or you’re fired this instance, now get back in line before I duct your pay for the time you’re wasting by even thinking you’re worthy of talking to someone in management!”
Now in that scenario the worker has no power at all, even though it actually is as we all know today, a proven benefit to have resonable working hours for the company.
So if you have a union and all the workers can collectively go “we need to talk about work hours or we strike” you force through the policy that is ultimately beneficial to the company, even though management hates the idea of there being 6hours more per day that their wage slaves are not at the work benches.
Why would workers argue for fewer hours if it doesn’t end up costing the company net profits? Because they are humans, not machines, and not everything in this world boils down to pure profit driven motives.
This is a bad example and overall I don't see the argument. For decades companies did force workers into extremely long hours. The standardization of the 40 hour work week was in some sense a collective action effort, starting with the request of the National Labor Union in the U.S. in 1866. [1] Prior to those efforts, workers in industrialized positions were indeed working 80 to 100 hours a week on average, with little to no recourse.
Beyond that, you ask 'Why would workers argue for fewer hours if it doesn't end up costing the company net profits? The workers don't care about net profits, at least at the expense of their own time. Time is money, and if the company has more of your time, you have less...
>Prior to those efforts, workers in industrialized positions were indeed working 80 to 100 hours a week on average, with little to no recourse.
And much lower productivity. Even by recent metrics we know the modern work is twice as efficient, but apparently the average hours per week worked is around 55-60 hours.
That's part of the point. It in fact has quickly dimishing returns to work more than X hours, and past that there probably is some physical breakdown point wher ea worker loses productivety in the mid-long term (e.g. working 120 hours for 2 weeks, then sick for a month. Congrats, you lost 80 hours of productiviy + whatever middling returns happened) but companies won't budge without collective action.
> Now in that scenario the worker has no power at all
The worker holds all the power, so long as another worker isn't an asshole ready to screw over his fellow man. What's the company going to do if the worker balks? Hire nobody? Not going to happen.
Which is what a union ultimately serves: Establishing a brotherhood where the workers agree to not be assholes towards each other, to not screw each other over, so that when a worker decides the terms are un-agreeable another worker isn't waiting to pounce to take his position. This retains a worker's power.
But if workers had common decency to begin with...
>What's the company going to do if the worker balks? Hire nobody? Not going to happen.
These days, yes. They get rid of Bob and make Andy do his and Bob's work (with no extra pay, of course), promising to replace Bob over the next 6 months while the company actually has a hiring freeze.
I wish more "assholes" would realize this before trying to turn against their peers.
> and not everything in this world boils down to pure profit driven motives.
that's not true. In fact, the polar opposite is true - every decision is in service to profit and the bottom line. It is only laws that prevent slavery. It is only laws that prevent over-work or exploitation.
I would say that it is better to have regulation over unions. Unions may or may not act in the interest of the employee - it's a hit or miss depending on the actual union in question. But as a citizen, you have some semblence of a vote on the gov't, and at least everybody gets the same gov't.
> I would say that it is better to have regulation over unions.
It’s not an either/or, there’s unions and there is labor law, and labor law is in large part written to codify the trade offs in incentives between workers and companies. Are you really trying to argue that workers should have no say in the laws written to govern them?
The problem with government (or too-large unions) is that different jobs have different employment concerns. It's hard to legislate in a way that covers all cases from seasonal farm work to IT office jobs to airline pilots. A union gives you more fine-grained representation to address the problems specific to your profession and workplace.
It makes a positive difference for the employees. You seem to imply that this is correlated to a negative difference for the employer, which is completely wrong.
Obviously in general it makes a positive difference for employees, that was a rhetorical question...
I have listed two main negative differences it makes for employers. I am hard-pressed to find any positive differences for them... on the issues this touches it's pretty much a zero-sum game so if employees gain it means employers 'lose'.
If something is positive for both sides then I think the market will eventually adopt it on its own.
The purpose of unions is to make sure the employees work is sustainable, easier, pleasant if possible. On a more practical level this means enforcing work regulations, if an employer is at risk of breaking regulations (intentionally or not), unions will help them keep the line.
A happier employee is more productive and less likely to leave the company on the forst occasion or do anything hostile (stealing, selling company secrets).
This is not exactly news, it has been known for at least 150 years.
Delta’s flight attendants (and a few other groups) aren’t in a union.
This has left Delta very motivated to make sure their flight attendants are happy so that they won’t unionise.
The end result is better workers, happier customers, and more productive workplace. But this wouldn’t happen without the threat of unionising hanging over Delta’s head.
I personally think a good outcome in situations like Apple is having maybe half their stores union, half not - Apple would be very motivated to keep the non-union employees happy. Customers could end up seeing which stores work better. A competitive marketplace, if you will.
Union autoworkers make more and habe better benefits than non union auto workers.
You know that when the big non unionized auto workers recebtly got raises? Right after the unionised ones fought for and got their own.
The union is the only thing that drives wages up. Non union shops, including your example of Delta flight staff, only get benefits because the unions are there. Without the other unions in that space, they would get nothing.
You know what would ensure Delta gets all the same benefits as the unionized staff around them? Joining the same union.
The purpose of unions is to extract as much as possible from the employer on the behalf of its members, or at least to extract more than the employer would otherwise have given.
You do not contradict anything I have written nor provide any examples of how unions might be a positive for employers...
Again, if an happier, more productive employee benefits the company then the market will sort it out by itself (For instances tech companies have not needed unions to offer high pay and plenty of perks). That said, it's not an universal truth that a happier employee is a net gain.
> if an happier, more productive employee benefits the company then the market will sort it out by itself
I don't think this argument in particular stands well against reality. The market is generally driven by players with concentrated power and it's very likely the interests of those players will align creating an even more one sided power imbalance. People's preferences are low entropy.
Things that are in the interest of individuals rarely "sort themselves out" without some intervention, usually from a regulatory body. And even that's less a democratic exercise than it is a lobbying one where concentrated donations are worth more than sparse individual contributions.
In the US there was a time when more people could own a house, car, and raise a family with just one family member's income. Now it's increasingly difficult to do it even with two incomes. People didn't decide to just work more and afford less. The market sorted itself to benefit those who already had more power and could influence.
> I don't think this argument in particular stands well against reality
I think it does. I mentioned the salaries and perks offered by tech companies. I could also mention Henry Ford.
If something benefits the company then they will do it, and if it works it will naturally spread.
> Things that are in the interest of individuals rarely "sort themselves out" without some intervention
I didn't write "in the interest of individuals", I wrote benefitting both sides, which means, crucially, also benefitting the company. But again, in many cases happier employees simply do not provide a net benefit to the company.
Back to the point: The claim that unions benefit both sides is naive and a fairy tale. Obviously unions do not benefit companies hence why they are opposing them as much as they are legally able to.
There's also a question of short-term vs long-term benefits to be considered.
Short-term, the demands that trade unions make do indeed make workers more productive.
But long-term, the company owners (and here I of course mean actors who hold significant amount of concentrated shares, not your average stockholder) and top management may see this as only the first step down the road where they do not wish to go. By this line of thinking, if you allow unions to establish a foothold with those basic demands, they will use that as a beachhead to make further and further demands that favor labor interests over those of the capital, with the end goal being a worker-owned business (i.e. socialism) which excludes the people who currently own the capital entirely. Naturally, they do see it as a threat to themselves - it is very much intended to be! And so they are willing to forgo some things that would be more profitable short-term.
> The purpose of unions is to extract as much as possible from the employer on the behalf of its members [...]
This is such a weird take. Why would employees do that? Employees benefit when the company benefits. If the company increases profits by 10%, that's 10% more that could potentially go to employee benefits, salaries, etc.
I want my employer to make as much profit as possible, because that guarantees my long-term employment and allows me to ask for a higher salary. If the company folds, the union folds, and everybody loses their jobs. Nobody wants that to happen.
>If the company increases profits by 10%, that's 10% more that could potentially go to employee benefits, salaries, etc.
if you work at a good company, maybe. If a company put profts back to the employees, we wouldn't need unions.
I think the interpretation of unions sucking companies dry is uncharitable. But many companies these past few decades have definitely shown they need someone to keep them in check.
I don't understand your interpretation of what I wrote... I did not write nor imply that unions are there to squeeze companies until they fold.
Obviously employees want the company to do well, at the same time unions are there to extract as much as they can on behalf of their members. Both are true and not mutually exclusive.
In your example, if profits go up 10% unions might push of big salary increases, indeed.
> The purpose of unions is to extract as much as possible from the employer on the behalf of its members, or at least to extract more than the employer would otherwise have given.
> You do not contradict anything I have written (...)
I mean, you directly contradict me in the previous paragraph about what the purpose of unions is, can we at least agree to disagree?
> (For instances tech companies have not needed unions to offer high pay and plenty of perks)
That's true, some companies do well without unions, but this does not make unions universally useless.
You're saying "the market" like it's some magic word that makes everything fair. The market for employment is not fair. Companies hold most of the power in America today, for most jobs. Highly paid white collar workers may hold a slight edge, sometimes, but it's not common. One of the ways that workers can balance the power that a company has over them, is to unionize so that as a group all of the workers can affect the company's decisions. This is good for the market, because it equalizes power and allows for the synthesis of good efficiency through fair price discovery for labor and good worker conditions through the equality of power that they hold in a union.
You can scream THE MARKET until your throat is dry, but it doesn't mean that an unfettered capitalism is the best thing for the country as a whole. Everyone must be thriving, otherwise we're all failing together.
You're missing the simple fact that this idea that the market will arrive at every positive thing that can be quantified is simply wrong. Markets will very very often converge on local maxima if allowed to. This is obvious if you think about it from a simple computational perspective: markets at best do a random walk search, and that can only ever find a local maximum, not the global maximum of a function.
It is perfectly possible that a given company performance can be reached by different paths, some better for employees, some worse.
In fact, I think that even seems like a very plausible hypothesis, given that treating your employees worse can have advantages (reduction in costs and headcount) and disadvantages (less motived and potentially productive employees, worse retention, difficulties attracting people) for the employer, so those two may roughly cancel out under a whole lot of different conditions.
So for the employer there may be no benefit (but also not really a downside) to treating employees better, but add to the mix this strong cultural idea in US business circles that unions are the worst and you get this taboo against unions and no market pressure to change that.
Obviously this is a quite horrific situation to be in because we get worse outcomes for employees and unchanged outcomes for employers. So no one benefits and most people have worse outcomes. Bad all around.
"If something is positive for both sides then I think the market will eventually adopt it on its own."
In Denmark we (by law) all have 5 weeks of holiday per year (besides public holidays), paid sick leave, 37 hour work week, paid maternity care (m/f), reasonable notice of termination, reasonable rules for work environment, etc.
All because of our unions.
How is it in the US?
Those very generous working conditions, and the mind set that it comes from and creates, I am convinced, is also why Denmark does not have an Apple, Tesla, Google, Nvidia, or SpaceX, and why the AI revolution is heavily based on the US. I’m not dinging you for it. I am US based ex EU (NL) myself, and have lived under both systems enough time to have experienced the difference. Countries and individuals can make choices between quality of life and achievement. And while there are some short range positive correlations (more quality of life leads to better thinking and more productivity), I think the long range correlation is negative (p100 achievement will require long hours and sacrifices).
Note that I am not saying one side is inherently better than the other. I’m saying it’s a choice with consequences. It is essentially a question about what you value in life.
Well, for the size of our country, I think we are doing well, we have Novo Nordisk, Maersk, Carlsberg, Lego and maybe others. We are above the US when it comes to Nobel prizes per capita, higher than the US when it comes to happyness.
Again I am not saying one system is better than the other. The companies you bring up are excellent global companies that are well run. But they have not caused the radical change like the ones that I mentioned.
Also what is the benefit of having those things, if your citizens generelly do not gain anything from it, eg with regard to life expentacy, happyness and wealth?
We sadly gave up proper benefits/balance of life for higher income. Which of course hoodwinked us when economy tightened up. Some states have it slight better, but I haven't had a proper vacation since college. Unless you count being laid off with no notice.
Then you have loopholes as usual. Layoffs in some states SHOULD be noticed in advance, but only if it's something like > X people laid off. So why not instead make rounds of layoffs over the months? Great for morale!
Good for you, one of the chosen few in your country. But then again you have to endure living in the US :-)
I have 6 weeks paid vacation (besides the public holidays), 5 extra family care days, unlimited (paid) child sick leave, paid own sick leave, work from home (2-3 days a week), great free public health care, free uni education for my children (and they get paid to go). I can't be fired without 6 months notice. And a 37 hour work week, and a clean conscience knowing that all workers have comparable work life. I have nothing to complain about.
"If something is positive for both sides then I think the market will eventually adopt it on its own."
Due to millions of regulations already in place, the market is not really free, but very distorted. So even if the "free market" would always go for the best solution, current state is nonproof for anything.
Otherwise you might argue, that europe would be a proof, because unions here are strong.
Without regulations the market would remain free for at most a hot minute and you would get regulation again, your own or someone elses, to paraphrase.
The single largest regulation in any capitalist society - the one on which literally the most policing resources are spent, by far - is abstract private property rights. Capitalism cannot exist without that, because you wouldn't be able to accumulate capital indefinitely if there aren't people with guns that are ready and willing to do violence on your behalf to protect the thing that some paper says its yours.
So, yes, the market isn't really free, and never has been, when you don't selectively exclude some kinds of regulation from consideration.
It makes plenty of difference for employees, just not for overall company output. If anything if your union increases employee happiness and retention that's probably better for business in the long run.
It looks to be a purely dogmatic ego trip where somehow blind loyalty is demanded even when it's not actually necessary.