It doesn't replace one untrustworthy, poorly managed organization with another. It just means involving a second untrustworthy, poorly managed organization with its own goals in my contract negotiations.
Some might say that unions are better, but that has not been true historically in the US - they have a long history of corruption, power-grabbing, leadership with incentives that aren't aligned with the best interests of their union members, extreme resistance to change that would fix problems, centralizing so that your workplace's specific concerns are irrelevant to the union (since your workplace makes up such a small percentage of the union), protecting crappy employees based solely on seniority, and generally stagnating the company (sometimes making it less competitive).
When I think of strong unions in the US, I think of police, teachers, federal employees, and professional sports. Not exactly examples of unions as positive forces.
Europe has a totally different union model that is interesting and seems to work better, but it isn't really an option in the US.
Unions in the US have a very specific legally-mandated structure.
In the US, unions are required to represent a legally-defined "unit". Generally this constitutes a group of workers with a well-defined role (e.g. line workers in a factory, butchers in a supermarket, graduate students in the UC system, teachers in California, etc.). When such a unit wishes to unionize, the members in the unit vote whether to establish a union. Assuming a sufficient number vote in favor, a union is formed that becomes the sole, exclusive, permanent (until dissolution) representative of all members of the unit during contract negotiations. This means that all members of the unit, including non-union members, are represented by the union for contract negotiations and it is illegal for anybody else, including yourself, to negotiate on your behalf (technically it is illegal for the business to negotiate with anybody other than the union, but this is functionally the same thing since any such agreement would be non-binding and then they would get fined for no benefit). In addition, no other union can legally be created that can represent any members of the unit. The only way to get different representation in such cases is to either dissolve the existing union or to vote out the leadership.
I don't know that it couldn't happen - but when an individual tech worker is making a decision about unionizing (in the US), it is always around an individual workplace unionizing. Industry-wide unions aren't very standard in the US (outside of industries with extremely high barriers to entry) and it seems like it would be extremely expensive/time-consuming to make it happen (beyond what I as an individual considering unionizing can realistically do).
TL;DR, the prevailing theory is that it's cultural.
> SUEDEKUM: Culturally, there is a sense [that] you have to be flexible when circumstances change, when new challenges arise. This is deeply embedded in the German approach of doing things.
> MARIN: That is part of a cultural thing: people trust each other.
> This culture, Marin says, also manifests itself in management style. Her research has shown that German C.E.O.’s are more willing to grant decision-making power to lower management. And that, she argues, improves quality. Because those are the managers who have the best sense of what customers want. This requires C.E.O.’s to have quite a bit of faith in their managers.
> You may be surprised to learn that German workers willingly accept a wage lower than the one their union negotiated. But they’d learned from history. Specifically, from their own history at the end of the Cold War.
Some might say that unions are better, but that has not been true historically in the US - they have a long history of corruption, power-grabbing, leadership with incentives that aren't aligned with the best interests of their union members, extreme resistance to change that would fix problems, centralizing so that your workplace's specific concerns are irrelevant to the union (since your workplace makes up such a small percentage of the union), protecting crappy employees based solely on seniority, and generally stagnating the company (sometimes making it less competitive).
When I think of strong unions in the US, I think of police, teachers, federal employees, and professional sports. Not exactly examples of unions as positive forces.
Europe has a totally different union model that is interesting and seems to work better, but it isn't really an option in the US.