The main thing I want from the UAW is a refund for all the money they took from me when I was a grad student. In the US, the UAW is the union for graduate student employees at several universities.
That’s proven not to be true. Ask all the SC garment workers or the New England shoe factory workers…
No, people want cheap even if that means their neighbors Steve and Diane lose their jobs, go on welfare and they end up paying more in taxes as a result offsetting their savings in cheaper textiles and shoes!
So… yeah, no. They want less expensive cars from Mexique.
And the pols want those nice Corp contributions… they do not represent their voting constituency.
USMCA (the NAFTA replacement; a free trade agreement between the US, Canada, and Mexico) does have some restrictions on the automotive industry in Canada and Mexico, but Mexico has been an automotive powerhouse for years now.
Mexico is already the 6th largest auto producing nation - basically the same size as Germany and South Korea. Mercedes already produces vehicles in Mexico (as does Audi, Baic Group, BMW, Stellantis, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mazda, Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen). About 70% of Mexico's vehicle production heads for the US and employs over 1M people. Mexico accounts for 23% of North American auto assembly. Mexico also imports about 50% of its auto parts from the US.
Before NAFTA, Mexico had restrictions requiring vehicles to be made domestically from domestic parts. NAFTA opened Mexico to US vehicles. Over time, Mexico's automotive industry took off assembling many US and foreign vehicles and creating lots of parts.
As of 2021, US/Canadian auto workers earned an average of around $20-21/hour. USMCA requires that 40-45% of auto workers earn a minimum of $16/hour, including all the parts manufacturing, etc. (NAFTA didn't have this wage requirement)
When you create free trade agreements, it can cut both ways. It opens Mexico to lots of US goods and services and it also means that Mexico can export to the US. At the same time, we've only seen moderate movement toward Mexican manufacturing with US/Canadian manufacturing accounting for 77% of North American manufacturing. Companies haven't just up and moved their American manufacturing to Mexico. Companies are still opening new US plants. Rivian is opening a $5B plant in Georgia (and before you say "because of the tax credits if you make EVs in the US" those also apply to countries we have a free trade agreement with like Mexico). Hyundai/Kia is opening a new plant in Georgia. Ford broke ground on a new plant in Tennessee in 2022, one of 4 new US factories. VinFast (a Vietnamese auto company) is opening a $4B plant in North Carolina. GM is spending billions on new US facilities.
So when someone says that automotive production will all be moving to Mexico because of this, it seems unlikely. Yes, Mexico will become an increasingly important part of the North American automotive industry, but we're seeing companies continue to invest in US factories - including unionized US factories. That's not to say that unions have zero impact on the planning decisions of automotive companies, but the view of the comment that you're responding to (that automotive production will simply be moved to Mexico) probably isn't going to come to pass in a clear-cut way. The US and Mexico have had a free trade agreement for 30 years now and we simply haven't seen companies run away from unions to Mexico. That's not to say that companies haven't used Mexican plants. They have. But we haven't even seen this type of thing come up in union negotiations. Mexico is producing around 30% more vehicles today than when free trade started. US production is flat, German production is down 20%, Canadian production is down 50%, Japanese production is down 25%, French down 60%, British down 40%. The US automotive industry isn't without issues, but it's doing pretty well compared to a lot of peer nations - even while Mexican imports are there.
Again, I'm not saying that it has no impact, but there's no evidence that the sky is falling. It's a political boogeyman more than a reality. It's also important to note that US vehicle production basically hasn't moved much since 1950. In fact, from 1950-1980, US production was around 8M vehicles per year. US automotive manufacturing is higher now than it was when we had more protections against cheap Mexican cars - while other high-income countries have seen declines and despite the fact that US automotive manufacturing saw no growth for 30 years when there were plenty of protections. It's...
It's pretty clear that this is better for the individual. Longer term they retain the option of changing the employer which is pretty much the default state. It sucks for the company but for the individual it's hard to argue that this is not a good move.
That’s why economic theories around unions underscore the importance of global solidarity. We can use our political power not only to empower local workers, but to refuse to work with global workers that aren’t themselves empowered.
Companies constantly want to try and outsource everything outside of he US, while trying to take advantage of the US economy and population. Seems like more often than not they fail once they realize most other 1st world countries' labor law are more annoying for a company than any union, and many 2nd/3rd world countries lack the talent if they need more than assembly line level labor done (and if they don't want to train US labor, they sure arent going to develop these countries). Or even more simply, when deploying latency and costs end up cancelling out any potential savings.
Much easier to eat the higher costs, hire and fire aggressively in the US (not that I agree nor approve, but sad reality with current labor laws), and try to grease the hands of US congress to sweeten the pot ever so slightly.
And is there a reason to not move to Mexico even without an union?
Labour will be cheaper anyway, what's stopping a company from milking the local population for as much as possible, paying as low as possible and when people start to get fed up with it and they just move it to Mexico?
There's no rational basis for this fear of unions, what you fear is globalisation itself, it's already happened, and it was caused by USA-exported economics ideology since the 80s in the form of neoliberalism.
Again, if we are considering the original comment I replied to about medium-term vs long-term, a move offshore to Mexico will always make sense in the long-term unless Mexican labour becomes as expensive as USA.
Considering break even points it will always make sense to move out, reasons to not move are the local incentives in the form of tax breaks and invested capital in factories, if the consideration is only about labour (which the take on unions making it easier for the move) it always make sense to move, regardless if it's a unionised workforce or not. Non-unionisation only delays this inevitability by allowing the company to milk the employees for a little longer, in the long-term it will eventually pack up and move if the incentives are not maintained (again in the form of tax breaks or if the company has recently re-invested in existing facilities).
To me, again, the fear of globalisation's side-effects is not a good excuse to promote a lack of worker solidarity, it only makes workers more powerless since at some point in the long-term the break even point is reached, without an union there's no collective force to pushback a company's decision to move their production somewhere else with cheaper labour, at least with an union there will be a conversation and negotiation around it.
One of the problems with the Union-Company relationship is that it's not long-term symbiotic. A union is apt to milk the cow dry. A company will put up with a union as long as it has to but not longer. It's a contentious relationship. It need not be. The relationship could be more cooperative, but it isn't. Cooperative unions are seen as weak and accommodating. Companies that voluntarily unionize are at a disadvantage --they are less flexible and will eventually lose out to the non-unionized company, unless there is some kind of regulatory capture going on.
We could kind of have our cake and eat it too if we became more protectionist and also modified the Union-Company relationship to be less contentious. If we prioritized the good of the American worker and society (to the disadvantage of other world economies) Wealth would be less unevenly distributed. Total wealth would decrease and efficiency would be reduced, but very likely we would have a happier American society but also likely a poorer international worker. Of course, this would also require strict immigration weighted more on ability rather than simple willingness to work for cheap.
Because unionized workers consistently have higher pay, better benefits and more rights.
Next time you see the headline about some company laying off thousands of people while simultaneously making record profits and paying their CEO some number of hundreds of millions of dollars per year, ask yourself why that never seems to happen to unionized workers.
Next time you see the headline about the "working poor" that have multiple jobs and still can't make ends meet, ask yourself why that never seems to happen to unionized workers.
Next time you see the headline about people going years without so much of a cost of living increase to their wages, ask yourself why that never seems to happen to unionized workers.
Workers need protection from everyone else; corporations and consumers would take everything if left unregulated. Like an expanding gas, you must build a box to constrain.
Exactly. It’s a medium timeline win. They won’t move prod there overnight, but eventually they will shift prod there and then it will become another brownfield company town like they have in the rust belt.
I see a lot of good and bad in unions. From a policy POV, I prefer a wealth tax that redistributes to regular people (workers), either as a UBI or tax break or social safety net. That wealth tax needs be global, similar in implementation to the global minimum corporate tax, to prevent capital flight.
This tax achieves a similar outcome to unions, it makes the lives of regular workers better by reducing the number of hours they need to work and giving them options, which implicitly changes the bargaining power. But on net it has much less downsides than unions. And it's more future proof when AI starts making people unemployed, whether that happens now or in 20 years.
Adding a union might net workers who join it higher pay in the short term, but who's to say that they aren't missing out on significant wage increases in the long term? You'll never see that counterfactual, and as a union gains momentum, it becomes increasingly unlikely we'll ever know how the workers might have performed without the union.
Interesting apprach, This makes sense and I wonder why people aren't talking more about it. I have a suspiction that companies would be paying people way more money if it wasn't for the pesky unions. This is also the reason why companies fight tooth-and-nail against unions. They do it out of kindness for the workers, so they are able to pay the workers more in the long run. People need to talk more about this, it's called corporate kindheartedness.
But you also hear of the people who work their butt off and can’t get promoted because union rules say promotions happen on tenure not tenure.
And of unions where the ceo and union president are golf buddies and they negotiate oh so very hard to get raises that don’t even match inflation.
There’s good and bad in both worlds. Ultimately the best defense you can have as a worker is to have in-demand skills and to think of employment as a business contract.
A union is like a lawyer. There are good and bad ones, and you may have to pay attention and hold their feet to the fire. But you're usually still a lot better off having one in your corner than trying to handle it yourself.
Are you unaware that people who "work their butt off" usually end up being promoted to non-union positions? My dad was union until he was promoted to manager. Then he stopped being union. So was my uncle. So was my brother in law. It happens all the time. And the best part is that the management position they get usually ends up being directly influenced by the union wages and benefits, because why would you just take on extra responsibility for no extra pay?
They don't care if they kill the cow, as long as they can extract a bit more milk from it. I don't have a problem with unions in general except for the rule against being able to fire and replace them all as a block. Let them negotiate jointly, fine, but employers should have the right to find alternatives.
Good for them. Got to keep unions alive for that collective bargaining. Given the recent state court rulings in AL, I am honestly surprised Mercedes is even keeping the plant open.
I always saw unions as a bureaucratic/political layer that sits on top of workers, collecting money without contributing.
I also don't think that people should all get the same pay or collectively bargain. Some people work harder, invest more in their skills, bring a better attitude, etc. They should get paid more.
You pay to be a part of a union so it must have some kind of value to the customers (the workers) otherwise no one would pay and there wouldn't be high union membership.
If workers felt that a good attitude and honing their skills would get them paid more than being a part of a union they wouldn't join.
That's possibly a function of the unions you've directly encountered, or some personal bias of your own.
> I also don't think that people should all get the same pay
See, you already have something in common with all the unions I've ever encountered.
If somebody brings something tangibly extra to a job then they deserve a better job title and pay bracket. Unions support this- higher pay for leading hands, for skill levels, for having first aid certification, etc.
> I always saw unions as a bureaucratic/political layer that sits on top of workers, collecting money without contributing.
Their contribution is bargaining. Actors in Hollywood have agents for that, but if you're a worker earning an average salary, you can't afford that. So you pool your resources together for that.
> I also don't think that people should all get the same pay or collectively bargain. Some people work harder, invest more in their skills, bring a better attitude, etc. They should get paid more.
Have you ever worked in an assembly line on a plant?
It's not just about pay. Collective action is the source of basic things you almost certainly take for granted, like 40-hour work weeks, workplaces with exits that aren't locked shut, and being able to protest at all without literally being gunned down by the Pinkertons.
The ruling class colludes and bargains any and every way they please. Among l other things, it's hypocritical to suggest that labors shouldn't be allowed to do the same.
> I also don't think that people should all get the same pay or collectively bargain. Some people work harder, invest more in their skills, bring a better attitude, etc. They should get paid more.
It would be nice if fair pay magically happened. But the reality is that most employers will pay you as little as they can get away with, regardless of how hard you work, how much you invested in your skills, or how good your attitude.
Most people are much smaller than the company they work for, are not expert negotiators, and don't have agents working on their behalf. They're overwhelmingly likely to get paid closer to what they deserve with a union than without one. Yes, sometimes there will be free riders (and that's part of why e.g. legal closed shop rules are important), but that applies to virtually everything you can do to try and improve your life.
The point of a union is to represent its members. Not all unions are good, but good unions should and do advocate for better working conditions and compensation for their members.
It’s fine to not agree with this but it’s also important to recognize that, in many industries, employees have no leverage to individually bargain for more pay. Corporate policy or a monopoly on a job market means a business won’t have financial incentive to pay any more than the minimum they can to maintain enough of a workforce to remain profitable.
Add to that a general desire for public companies to prioritize short term stock gains over long term growth and we end up with a common operating state that can be pretty harsh for the average participant of the US economy.
Generally, if a manufacturing job is the only available job in town, you take it, move (if you can afford to), or go hungry.
> I always saw unions as a bureaucratic/political layer that sits on top of workers, collecting money without contributing.
I can see how, especially in the USA, this might be what you hear. Are you open to some simple facts on the ground illustrating how this isn't really accurate?
In terms of contributions, the results are real and measurable: https://www.epi.org/publication/briefingpapers_bp143/ on average 20% increase in wages and 28% increase in total compensation. Typically wages increase across the board, however lower-wage workers see higher percentage increases. That doesn't equate to higher-wage workers getting lower wages in unionized industries, though. There's a concept called "the union wage premium" that holds time and time again, wherein union jobs, no matter the skill level, on average pay 10% more.
Union workers also usually have better pension plans and more vacation time.
> I also don't think that people should all get the same pay or collectively bargain. Some people work harder, invest more in their skills, bring a better attitude, etc. They should get paid more.
Unions aren't communist dictatorships, depending on the union and industry there'll still be pay tiers based on seniority and skill. And, on average, you will simply see higher pay, no matter your skill level. If you truly believe that you're the 1% of stellar worker and are compensated as such, and might make less under the union, first I'd point out that that doesn't really happen, and second I'd point out, there's always a better worker. Seems to me better to err on collective bargaining and seeing your coworkers as allies rather than your bosses, considering incentives.
Not to mention wages aren't the only thing on the table: benefits like time off, health care, whether the company can lay a bunch of people off, etc, are all protections you simply can't bargain for on your own no matter what kind of 100x engineer you are. See: all the stellar engineers that Google laid off (after they axed the contractors, they came top down from their priciest engineers it seems!).
I would challenge you: from whom are you typically hearing anti-union propaganda? In my experience it's from people and entire industries that are clearly and objectively financially motivated to be opposed to unions.
Important to note that there is little differentiation of labor productivity in mechanized labor environments. I can't operate a machine faster than the guy next to me. We can only both competently operate the machine. Enabling safe operation of machinery is critical to workers and may have downward pressure without pushback from employees. An organization of employees is necessary to pushback against the scale of a corporation. Employees form a union protecting standards of pay and safe labor practices for all operators of machines.
For the above, imaging those machine operators are airline pilots.
>Some people work harder, invest more in their skills, bring a better attitude, etc. They should get paid more.
And how often in the past 20 years have you seen that backfire and end up with the best employees
1. being stalled for a promotion because they are "too important to promote". Or worse, promoted for no extra pay but extra responsibilities
2. fail to negotiate a small raise and then move to a new company for a big raise... only for the company to hire someone for more than that employee asked for.
3. get kicked out anyway because they were "overpaid", only to have the company fold without their knowledge that kept a million dollar service afloat
4. get passed up for another employee due to nepotism, office poliics, or a variety of other scandals waiting to happen
5. stand up for themselves and their team against legally dubious plans, only to get kicked out and then the company gets sued later.
Companies consistently show they don't care about talent, nor do they encourage retention. If they want to stay a revolving door, why hope that working harder will get you noticed?
who is likely to be more successful in negotiating with a very large corporation like Mercedes? A union representing thousands of workers or, an individual that is replaceable no matter what skills they have?
From my experience, it’s the individual. I always get paid more than the union members. I also notice that the non union members seem to have a bit more motivation and spirit and their own idea about their goals and where they want to go compared to the union members who seem to delegate the progress of their careers to their employers.
Clearly it’s not a case of one being better than the other. It’s great we have the choice. Unions are good for some types of people and job but terrible for others.
wasn't there some kerfuffle years ago with a Mercedes exec getting arrested at a traffic stop? Something about an invalid or missing passport and a program targeting undocumented immigrants driving in Alabama.
If the plant is producing at expected amounts, the cost of paying a human and union acceptable wage won't be that much. A union contract means you won't have labor strife later, just negotiate a contact. Without a union you have endless turmoil and mad workers who are thinking about having a union.
It seems like the bulk of the comments here are in response to a dead comment. @dang: Can we either revive the dead comment or suppress the entire story?
The cognitive dissonance needed to believe countries with high unionization (Austria, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, etc.) and collective agreements are bad for their citizens while the US is touted as a gold standard is unbelievable.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] threadThat’s proven not to be true. Ask all the SC garment workers or the New England shoe factory workers…
No, people want cheap even if that means their neighbors Steve and Diane lose their jobs, go on welfare and they end up paying more in taxes as a result offsetting their savings in cheaper textiles and shoes!
So… yeah, no. They want less expensive cars from Mexique.
And the pols want those nice Corp contributions… they do not represent their voting constituency.
Mexico is already the 6th largest auto producing nation - basically the same size as Germany and South Korea. Mercedes already produces vehicles in Mexico (as does Audi, Baic Group, BMW, Stellantis, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mazda, Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen). About 70% of Mexico's vehicle production heads for the US and employs over 1M people. Mexico accounts for 23% of North American auto assembly. Mexico also imports about 50% of its auto parts from the US.
Before NAFTA, Mexico had restrictions requiring vehicles to be made domestically from domestic parts. NAFTA opened Mexico to US vehicles. Over time, Mexico's automotive industry took off assembling many US and foreign vehicles and creating lots of parts.
As of 2021, US/Canadian auto workers earned an average of around $20-21/hour. USMCA requires that 40-45% of auto workers earn a minimum of $16/hour, including all the parts manufacturing, etc. (NAFTA didn't have this wage requirement)
When you create free trade agreements, it can cut both ways. It opens Mexico to lots of US goods and services and it also means that Mexico can export to the US. At the same time, we've only seen moderate movement toward Mexican manufacturing with US/Canadian manufacturing accounting for 77% of North American manufacturing. Companies haven't just up and moved their American manufacturing to Mexico. Companies are still opening new US plants. Rivian is opening a $5B plant in Georgia (and before you say "because of the tax credits if you make EVs in the US" those also apply to countries we have a free trade agreement with like Mexico). Hyundai/Kia is opening a new plant in Georgia. Ford broke ground on a new plant in Tennessee in 2022, one of 4 new US factories. VinFast (a Vietnamese auto company) is opening a $4B plant in North Carolina. GM is spending billions on new US facilities.
So when someone says that automotive production will all be moving to Mexico because of this, it seems unlikely. Yes, Mexico will become an increasingly important part of the North American automotive industry, but we're seeing companies continue to invest in US factories - including unionized US factories. That's not to say that unions have zero impact on the planning decisions of automotive companies, but the view of the comment that you're responding to (that automotive production will simply be moved to Mexico) probably isn't going to come to pass in a clear-cut way. The US and Mexico have had a free trade agreement for 30 years now and we simply haven't seen companies run away from unions to Mexico. That's not to say that companies haven't used Mexican plants. They have. But we haven't even seen this type of thing come up in union negotiations. Mexico is producing around 30% more vehicles today than when free trade started. US production is flat, German production is down 20%, Canadian production is down 50%, Japanese production is down 25%, French down 60%, British down 40%. The US automotive industry isn't without issues, but it's doing pretty well compared to a lot of peer nations - even while Mexican imports are there.
Again, I'm not saying that it has no impact, but there's no evidence that the sky is falling. It's a political boogeyman more than a reality. It's also important to note that US vehicle production basically hasn't moved much since 1950. In fact, from 1950-1980, US production was around 8M vehicles per year. US automotive manufacturing is higher now than it was when we had more protections against cheap Mexican cars - while other high-income countries have seen declines and despite the fact that US automotive manufacturing saw no growth for 30 years when there were plenty of protections. It's...
Much easier to eat the higher costs, hire and fire aggressively in the US (not that I agree nor approve, but sad reality with current labor laws), and try to grease the hands of US congress to sweeten the pot ever so slightly.
According to you, the Austrian economy should be in shambles. Instead, Austria boasts one of of not the most livable environments on earth.
It's crazy how the USA vehemently refuses to learn anything from other countries.
Labour will be cheaper anyway, what's stopping a company from milking the local population for as much as possible, paying as low as possible and when people start to get fed up with it and they just move it to Mexico?
There's no rational basis for this fear of unions, what you fear is globalisation itself, it's already happened, and it was caused by USA-exported economics ideology since the 80s in the form of neoliberalism.
It’s about tradeoffs. There is a point where it makes economic sense to send that work to Mexico.
Considering break even points it will always make sense to move out, reasons to not move are the local incentives in the form of tax breaks and invested capital in factories, if the consideration is only about labour (which the take on unions making it easier for the move) it always make sense to move, regardless if it's a unionised workforce or not. Non-unionisation only delays this inevitability by allowing the company to milk the employees for a little longer, in the long-term it will eventually pack up and move if the incentives are not maintained (again in the form of tax breaks or if the company has recently re-invested in existing facilities).
To me, again, the fear of globalisation's side-effects is not a good excuse to promote a lack of worker solidarity, it only makes workers more powerless since at some point in the long-term the break even point is reached, without an union there's no collective force to pushback a company's decision to move their production somewhere else with cheaper labour, at least with an union there will be a conversation and negotiation around it.
We could kind of have our cake and eat it too if we became more protectionist and also modified the Union-Company relationship to be less contentious. If we prioritized the good of the American worker and society (to the disadvantage of other world economies) Wealth would be less unevenly distributed. Total wealth would decrease and efficiency would be reduced, but very likely we would have a happier American society but also likely a poorer international worker. Of course, this would also require strict immigration weighted more on ability rather than simple willingness to work for cheap.
Next time you see the headline about some company laying off thousands of people while simultaneously making record profits and paying their CEO some number of hundreds of millions of dollars per year, ask yourself why that never seems to happen to unionized workers.
Next time you see the headline about the "working poor" that have multiple jobs and still can't make ends meet, ask yourself why that never seems to happen to unionized workers.
Next time you see the headline about people going years without so much of a cost of living increase to their wages, ask yourself why that never seems to happen to unionized workers.
(I could go on)
Like rent control, unions often protect existing workers at the expense of everyone else.
And that protection can extend into retaining bad workers, punishing highly productive workers.
Not that all unions are a net negative but many are.
This tax achieves a similar outcome to unions, it makes the lives of regular workers better by reducing the number of hours they need to work and giving them options, which implicitly changes the bargaining power. But on net it has much less downsides than unions. And it's more future proof when AI starts making people unemployed, whether that happens now or in 20 years.
The fairy tale of "unions are bad" is only good for the rich who get paid either way, just more without unions.
Economic theory, strategic behavior, and repeated observations through history (leading to the genesis if unions).
And of unions where the ceo and union president are golf buddies and they negotiate oh so very hard to get raises that don’t even match inflation.
There’s good and bad in both worlds. Ultimately the best defense you can have as a worker is to have in-demand skills and to think of employment as a business contract.
I also don't think that people should all get the same pay or collectively bargain. Some people work harder, invest more in their skills, bring a better attitude, etc. They should get paid more.
Unless workers band together they have no bargaining power. Without bargaining power the owners horde the profits.
If workers felt that a good attitude and honing their skills would get them paid more than being a part of a union they wouldn't join.
Union membership is 10% in the United States.
I think you’ve confused unions with management.
That's possibly a function of the unions you've directly encountered, or some personal bias of your own.
> I also don't think that people should all get the same pay
See, you already have something in common with all the unions I've ever encountered.
If somebody brings something tangibly extra to a job then they deserve a better job title and pay bracket. Unions support this- higher pay for leading hands, for skill levels, for having first aid certification, etc.
class bias most likely
Their contribution is bargaining. Actors in Hollywood have agents for that, but if you're a worker earning an average salary, you can't afford that. So you pool your resources together for that.
> I also don't think that people should all get the same pay or collectively bargain. Some people work harder, invest more in their skills, bring a better attitude, etc. They should get paid more.
Have you ever worked in an assembly line on a plant?
And, famously, a union. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_SAG-AFTRA_strike
Also, middle management.
I see unions as providing a necessary counterbalance to employers, who tend to have vastly more power than employees.
The fairest deals are struck between two parties with equal power.
It would be nice if fair pay magically happened. But the reality is that most employers will pay you as little as they can get away with, regardless of how hard you work, how much you invested in your skills, or how good your attitude.
Most people are much smaller than the company they work for, are not expert negotiators, and don't have agents working on their behalf. They're overwhelmingly likely to get paid closer to what they deserve with a union than without one. Yes, sometimes there will be free riders (and that's part of why e.g. legal closed shop rules are important), but that applies to virtually everything you can do to try and improve your life.
It’s fine to not agree with this but it’s also important to recognize that, in many industries, employees have no leverage to individually bargain for more pay. Corporate policy or a monopoly on a job market means a business won’t have financial incentive to pay any more than the minimum they can to maintain enough of a workforce to remain profitable.
Add to that a general desire for public companies to prioritize short term stock gains over long term growth and we end up with a common operating state that can be pretty harsh for the average participant of the US economy.
Generally, if a manufacturing job is the only available job in town, you take it, move (if you can afford to), or go hungry.
I can see how, especially in the USA, this might be what you hear. Are you open to some simple facts on the ground illustrating how this isn't really accurate?
In terms of contributions, the results are real and measurable: https://www.epi.org/publication/briefingpapers_bp143/ on average 20% increase in wages and 28% increase in total compensation. Typically wages increase across the board, however lower-wage workers see higher percentage increases. That doesn't equate to higher-wage workers getting lower wages in unionized industries, though. There's a concept called "the union wage premium" that holds time and time again, wherein union jobs, no matter the skill level, on average pay 10% more.
Union workers also usually have better pension plans and more vacation time.
> I also don't think that people should all get the same pay or collectively bargain. Some people work harder, invest more in their skills, bring a better attitude, etc. They should get paid more.
Unions aren't communist dictatorships, depending on the union and industry there'll still be pay tiers based on seniority and skill. And, on average, you will simply see higher pay, no matter your skill level. If you truly believe that you're the 1% of stellar worker and are compensated as such, and might make less under the union, first I'd point out that that doesn't really happen, and second I'd point out, there's always a better worker. Seems to me better to err on collective bargaining and seeing your coworkers as allies rather than your bosses, considering incentives.
Not to mention wages aren't the only thing on the table: benefits like time off, health care, whether the company can lay a bunch of people off, etc, are all protections you simply can't bargain for on your own no matter what kind of 100x engineer you are. See: all the stellar engineers that Google laid off (after they axed the contractors, they came top down from their priciest engineers it seems!).
I would challenge you: from whom are you typically hearing anti-union propaganda? In my experience it's from people and entire industries that are clearly and objectively financially motivated to be opposed to unions.
For the above, imaging those machine operators are airline pilots.
You're thinking of management.
And how often in the past 20 years have you seen that backfire and end up with the best employees
1. being stalled for a promotion because they are "too important to promote". Or worse, promoted for no extra pay but extra responsibilities
2. fail to negotiate a small raise and then move to a new company for a big raise... only for the company to hire someone for more than that employee asked for.
3. get kicked out anyway because they were "overpaid", only to have the company fold without their knowledge that kept a million dollar service afloat
4. get passed up for another employee due to nepotism, office poliics, or a variety of other scandals waiting to happen
5. stand up for themselves and their team against legally dubious plans, only to get kicked out and then the company gets sued later.
Companies consistently show they don't care about talent, nor do they encourage retention. If they want to stay a revolving door, why hope that working harder will get you noticed?
Clearly it’s not a case of one being better than the other. It’s great we have the choice. Unions are good for some types of people and job but terrible for others.
No matter how MB management feels about Alabama and its laws, stockholders would hang 'em from lamposts if they shut down that plant on a whim.
The 600M wouldn't mark down to zero if they decided to shut it down.
That plant has been in operation for almost 30 years without a union.
The UAW staffing rules are probably a bigger sticking-point than the dollar-amount of salary.
I just did that, not because I agree, but because a lot of people in IT have the similar view. Discussing and refuting that view is essential.