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(I want to preface this that I consider myself pro-union, so people don't just stop reading halfway through. Also this is all my 2 cents, I'm not an expert in these topics by any means)

Unions can definitely solve it, be it the actual optimal thing to do for each individual or not, should everyone involved unionize. Even then though, workers would also like to work 2 hours a week for the same pay... it doesn't mean a union forming to do it would be successful. The same dynamics eventually come back into play: is it actually more efficient? If not, is that money loss something the union workers are willing to take? It's tempting to say "they can just force the business to cut profits anyways!" and... sure, they could, but they could do that while being more efficient and get even more money too. I.e. ultimately the union and people that make it up are just as interested in making sure they balance doing a certain amount of what they don't like with a certain amount of being efficient to get the most out of it. Whoever you make the group that needs to be convinced it's worthwhile you still need to convince it's the overall more efficient choice.

On the topic of unions though, unions typically form for lower paid workers. Not that they never form for higher paid workers but they tend to have more options already, less to gain, and more to lose when joining a union compared to a lower paid workers. The amount of effort a business will put in to avoiding a union will also vary with pay as the relative asks tend to scale as well e.g. on pay a union for ~70k/year auto workers wanting a 10% pay bump is cheaper to accept than a union for ~140k/year tech workers wanting a 10% pay bump.

I think tech workers will eventually make and join unions regularly. Maybe not in the current pay and political climate, but eventually. Until then our relatively small problems of "having to deal with showing up in person at work for one of the higher paying jobs" are not going to be as huge of drivers to unionize as places that wanted to keep fingers or earn a more average salary.




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