What ? Seems like I am better of without a union if I am getting more pay?. Also where is the conversation around building a better product to add more value in this union debate?
In France, it's mandatory for companies with more than 50 employees to have workers council and that has to be consulted on serious decisions ( changing offices, firing people, layoffs, etc.) and has some limited negotiation power. They negotiate company-wide policies (accord) on behalf of the employees that have to be at least as good as the branch-wide policies ( convention collective) - e.g. all workers in media companies get 20 days extra vacation because that's what the branch collective bargaining agreement says.
Furthermore, oftentimes ( sometimes it's mandatory), there are profit sharing schemes, e.g in my company 1% of the profits is shared among the employees, so your incentives are directly aligned with the company ( it comes to around a salary's worth of a bonus, so it's decent).
I think the google and microsoft staff have been trying to create the first tech oriented one though.
Correlation is not causation (they are in different industries.)
> Also where is the conversation around building a better product to add more value in this union debate?
That's what "codetermination" is. European branches of US tech companies do have works councils, which are like mini-codetermination.