Can you elaborate? Because for me, working in scandinavia, unions looked quite useful and reasonable.
* The objective of trade unions is not to protect workers and improve their conditions (at least directly). It’s to protect themselves.
* In every organization, there exists people with diverse attributes: capabilities, attitudes towards work/life, etc. There are always people who don’t want to or can’t work; and guess what they do? They join unions to protect themselves. Over time union center became international house of suckers and weirdos, each worse than the other.
* In an effort to protect themselves, unions politicized the work environment. They put themselves everywhere in key committees, including a union committee having last word on hirings and firings. That made them unfirable. They exploited the coronavirus situation, to blame employers and opponents. A scientific project can become a playground for union politics. I believe in climate change, but not in politicizing it. They seize every opportunity to attack employers and those not aligned with them. The goal is to use any chance to perpetuate an image that they protect people.
* Union will plot against any excellence in organization. To minimize contrast, they work hard to fail good people and projects around, or portray them as worker-abusers (ie, the reason that they succeed is because they abuse people).
* Unions will fiercely defend status quo and do not allow any constructive reform. The area of specialty that they advertised for themselves was an ancient technology from 1980s (and even that they wouldn’t do it). Every time people suggested to reform the department activities, they refused the proposals. You may not believe it, but department told them, OK, you can keep doing your own activities, we don’t reform them, but other people can start projects in orthogonal directions not related to yours. They still refused (they didn’t want competition) and basically forced everyone to work on their ancient advertised area of activity.
* Union engaged in all sorts of abusive practices. It was disgusting to see a lot of them rarely showed up at work (which was strange considering that they put themselves in various committees). I asked a department manager (“responsable”) how come this or that guy shows up at work only few times a year. He said, if you are a known member of union you can do that, and this is an issue in France. They yell, and bully people, create a toxic environment for others, repel and fire those not blending in etc,
* Union members felt very entitled and justified their actions by making themselves believe a skewed view of the world. They felt that they are entitled to a life even with ZERO work, and world owes to them.
* Unions will be perpetually on strike. What makes you think they will be happy with a laid back 9-5 job with decent pay and great benefits? Even with no work, they still go on strikes. They take tax money from society with little contribution, and make your commute and life periodically miserable.
* Unions are especially problematic in public sector, where incentives are aligned with cronyism not meritocracy. A lot of people are hired who lack abilities to perform the work in question. They form large powerful unions.
Don’t get me wrong. There might be a place for “traditional” textbook unions. But I don’t know if it ever works in practice. My experience was negative and counterintuitive.
I've never heard of these people being lazy, not wanting to work etc.
In fact German engineering is the envy of the world!
VW, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche all German engineered and manufactured by heavily unionized workforces!
Sounds like your anecdotal bad experience with unions is not representative of reality.
And FWIW I can list you just as many terrible anecdotes about how awful business managers are...
And German car engineering is mostly known for being overly complicated, I say that as a German.
Close to zero progress in electrifying European produced cars. I would say unions are the cause for the delay resisting any change away from skills their members have, but obsoleted by electric cars with 1/10 the number of parts required.
Being German doesn't give your statement credibility - you don't have to be German to drive or understand a German car.
If you said "as a German automotive engineer" then it might carry some weight, but only if also provided specifics.
Sure, but for each of those there are 10-100 other smaller companies in automotive or other industries that don't have unions, and some German companies have stirred up quite a few scandals of not following the employment laws or abusing their workforce, which coincidentally was mostly immigrants.
Cherry picking the big, wealthy car brands to represent the manufacturing industry is like cherry picking FAANG for representing the software dev industry.
But pointing out there are wildly successful unions filled with hardworking people is "cherry picking"?
There are good and bad unions everywhere, but I think the closed-shop restrictions in the US that force you to join a particular union as a condition of employment exacerbates the worst qualities of them here.
Having read it, I now don't believe for one minute you "had a naive image in mind" before or "opened your eyes" after your experience.
This isn't an argument against unions, it is an argument against any kind of human organization. Its more damning to how Tesla is now then to Tesla with unionized workers. Following your logic you should be all for unions and if you took it further, anti-capitalist.
Also, power doesn't corrupt. It reveals.
Protecting themselves ? check. Politicized the work environment ? check. Abusive practices ? check. Skewed view of the world and cronyism ? check.
I think what you are seeing is just a reflection of who succeeds in French companies. Some chose unions, some management, some find other niches, but none of these seem attached to specific values to me.
Lawyers are famously hated around the world. But it's almost universally better to fight one if you have one on your side. Same with unions and companies. Having worked in two companies in the last few years in the same market, in the same area, one union and one not... The difference is night and day in favor of the unionized shop.
In a working market, pitching companies one against the others could have the same effect as unions, but I think there is enough implicit and explicit collusion and perverse incentives that we are far from that ideal.
The ceiling on bad behavior is set by management, because they can do all of those bad things people claim unions do, and more - right now. The union gives you recourse
Seem like a strawman, worker conditions are light years ahead where workers are organized.
You sound like someone arguing against companies or capitalism because tax evasion exists saying “maybe there’s a case for textbook capitalism but in reality it doesn’t work” when we have literal proof that not capitalism and unions work. Nothing is perfect and ofcause unions can be better and companies can as well. But the net effect of unions is positive, and they form naturally in every place where you don’t allow anti-union policies and anti union worker discrimination.
The basic problem is, if we have such powerful semi-paralegal entity (considering its scope and power), it protects people in need, but what mechanisms do we have in place to prevent it from evolving into an entity protecting itself (or to a mixed state), attracting those with perverse incentives in addition to those in need?
I agree with comments above. I wouldn’t say we should rush to dismiss unions. It probably depends on a lot of factors, eg, on country and how it’s set up. However, we need to recognize that this is an organization functioning like any other, eg, a bank, it has internal motives and can, and will, use its concentrated power to produce good and bad results. We probably need a balanced approach, and checks ...
As a mostly labourer union, CGT is a minority in universities, especially among teachers and researchers (less so in administrative and maintenance departments).