Counterpoint: if even the most privileged workers in the world are unionized, it's a strong signal that unionization should be for everybody who is employed by a boss.
Unions are terrible, and only appropriate when your employer or industry is even more terrible than a union. That does apply to many industries unfortunately, but not Google employees. Not even close. It’s also a safe bet that tech workers will earn less under a union.
A family member works in an industry that has only a single employer within about a 500 mile radius. He has absolutely no leverage and he needs a union. Even under the net-beneficial union, he’s had many negative effects, including losing his job and requiring his family to move, because of the seniority rules that many unions have. Too many older union members moved to his (more prosperous) city, and they get scheduling precedence, so he was reduced to an on-call who was never called. He eventually got “permission” to transfer and was able to move to a remote town where his lower seniority would still allow him to get work.
I constantly hear of stories where senior union members are not doing their jobs and taking the spot of someone who really wants to be there, but it’s nearly impossible to fire them due to union rules and their proficiency in gaming the system.
Don’t get me started on teachers unions. If you have kids, that one should really piss you off.
Seniority rules in unions are chapter-based, and chapters themselves are city- or business-based. If someone is moving in from a different chapter, that seniority generally doesn't carry over to their new chapter, and even when seniority does carry over it can't result in the transferring member displacing another union member's job.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/10/fiat-d10.html
but nobody said it has to be _those_ unions.
It's a bit like saying that since the Republican and Democratic party are, on the whole, corrupt and subservient to corporate interests (which they are), then political organizations are a bad idea.
It isn't - you just need independent, uncorrupted, accountable, distributed-power organizations. And it's the same with unions.
I think unions historically have sometimes been great, and sometimes horrible. Two examples of unions actually making the world a worse place are the police unions and the teachers' unions in the United States.
If you wonder why we can't fix police corruption, it's because the union protects them - so you can't have both. If you wonder why we can't fix education, it's because the union actively defends teachers that are demonstrably bad for learning (and have visible apathy to the point of sleeping in class while "teaching" students) - so you can't have both.
There's more to the world than worker's rights.
The teacher's unions protect teachers at the expense of students. Basically the union doesn't care - at all - about teaching students (it's for the teachers, after all). They only care about stopping teachers from getting fired. It's our youth that suffer from receiving a shitty education. The assumption that "the teacher is always right" is profoundly damaging to our youth. The decline of the American education system (below college) is well studied.
https://hechingerreport.org/third-indication-u-s-educational...
Just to throw out a counterpoint, there are some who feel the education system is not declining, although I disagree. I encourage you to come to your own conclusions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/10/15/how-are-...
There's a movie about it if you want to watch it:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1566648/
Yes, it's a documentary with an angle, but there's enough information in there to convince me.
As far as teachers unions, that is an argument that a lot of people would disagree with but i've decided i don't want to discuss it in detail here.
Do you value the teachers or the students more?
It has become so hostile, the dichotomy really is that stark. All attempts to negotiate with the teachers' union, even offering them substantial bonuses to fire teachers well known for terrible performance, have been met with "fuck you" by the union.
You're right, not everybody will agree. Some people will side with the teachers. I think those people are ruining future generations.
The movie you link "Waiting for Superman" spends allot of time talking about the charter school movement which is not mentioned in your post. Arguably charter schools are an extension of "the parent is always right" motto as it is touted as giving the parent more choices. To talk about the decline of education and this movie without mentioning the role of charter schools is a disservice to the movie and the discussion.
It has nothing to do with the schools. You can't fire teachers with tenure (edit: actually it's even worse - this is for any teachers not just with tenure) except under pretty outrageous circumstances. So even if they show up drunk, they are still gainfully employed.
If we have universal disdain for police and perpetuate the idea that they are thugs, what type of workforce do you think will be willing to take that job, and how hard do you think the existing workforce will be motivated to behave better? In your own job, or in school, do you tend to be motivated more by encouragement, or by being made to feel like shit?
If we view it as respectful and honorable work, we are more likely to attract a workforce who values these things. When people are judged prematurely, I find that they tend to live up to those judgments, for better or for worse.