On the one hand, we had a few decades of unprecedented sharing of prosperity. Those times have ended.
On the other hand, the unions have become their own sclerotic system of oppression. The greater pity, they do not see it that way.
Especially once all this “deregulation” has finished. Actually, it was not deregulation, but divestiture of public services to the plutocrats. Barely any regulations have been removed.
Now we have basic services supposedly available on a free market, but in practice there are so many requirements that it’s all crony capitalism. And one of the major powers fighting for its share of the bureaucracy and waste is the unions. That’s one reason why it costs so much and takes so long to do anything in an industry controlled by unions.
Unions are nice, but tricky to do right, and currently there are a lot of bad examples.
The private sector unionization rate is around 6.7% in the US so, despite whatever issues unions may have presented in the past, they are certainly not the primary cause of any of our current economic issues.
But the public sector unionization rate is more like 36%, and unions have an outsized economic impact. They aren’t the primary cause of our issues, but they have their share.
Whether it’s teacher unions that make sure teachers can’t get promoted for their quality, or construction unions that make sure housing can’t be built without protracted negotiations and significant expense, or transportation unions that make sure automated subways always have an operator, multiple operators in New York, or dockworker unions that oppose new technology on the (correct) assumption that they would lose jobs. Union opposition to technology was one reason why the Port of San Francisco no longer is a major shipping port; rather than some losing their jobs, everybody lost their jobs.
It’s nice if labor can partner with capital. In practice, it’s often more like a squabble for scarce resources. Sometimes you have to accept that a role is no longer necessary, but that idea doesn’t fit the union ideology.
You're making an ideological argument, not a factual argument.
How anyone can argue that working-class people have too much economic power today is just bizarre to me. The decrease in the share of the productivity gains to the working class and the rise in inequality tracks almost exactly with the decrease in unionization.
I do not claim that working-class people have too much power. I claim that unions, under the impression that they are working for the people, actually are their own form of oppression. The capitalists control the capital, the union bosses control the labor, and the worker is shut out. The ending of Animal Farm, illustrated.
There is an ideological component. I suspect that unions have a blind spot regarding just how important labor is. Of course there is no value to humans unless humans get their fair share of benefits out of the process. The problem comes when labor for labor’s sake becomes the goal.
Then unions tend to reject labor-saving technologies, which would work if they had a captive market. That might contribute to why unions still have such a large share of government and geographically constrained markets. But a lot of the time, the union temporarily improves the worker’s conditions, and then the capitalist moves the job overseas, or a competitor who is already overseas rises out of obscurity, or the citizens flee to the suburbs; and the next generation has a harder time finding an entry-level position to escape from poverty.
Unions also tend to discount intellectual contribution. In the United States, teachers are constantly under attack regarding their professionalism. Well, maybe we could treat them as professionals more easily if their unions allowed us to treat them as professionals. But no, they are labor, and a long-serving crank has more status than an inspirational young teacher. (Inspirational old teachers also have more status, but inspirational young teachers rarely stick around that long.)
I’m not in principle opposed to unions. I just think in notable cases they have been harmful.
