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"Can't the same be said about companies that aren't non-unionized?"

No, for two reasons. First, a company always has far greater negotiating power than an individual worker. Second, the company's incentive is to spend as little money on workers as they can get away with, in order to maximize profits. As a result non-union jobs almost always pay less and offer fewer benefits than unionized jobs.

So even if a company could be convinced that they should not ask warehouse workers to pee in a bottle instead of taking the time to go to the bathroom, workers still come out on the losing end when they do not have a union.

"You could just as well say you are giving yourself up to the whims of the union leadership"

Workers have a say in union leadership decisions -- at a minimum they elect their leaders, but in most cases there are other ways for people to be involved. So unless the workforce also represents a significant fraction of ownership of the company (very unlikely for any company of significant size) they will have far less say in management decisions than in union decisions.

"People shouldn't have to join a particular union"

That is standard union-busting propaganda. It sounds great to give people a choice but the reality is that it reduces union representation and gives management an advantage over the workers by keeping them divided (among other things, it makes a strike far less effective and far less of a threat). The reason unions demand that the entire workforce be part of the union is to ensure that the union can negotiate with the company on equal footing -- two big parties negotiating, not one big party dealing with many small parties.

As an alternative place workers on the board. Have them be elected by the workers. A lot of places in Europe apparently do this. There's your non union workers representation and brings parity to negotiating power as well.

If you have to force people to join your political club, then you have no right being a political club, do you?

Unions are just another group of people trying to take the little bit of power workers have, to use it for their own ends.

Except that we are not talking about a political club. We are not talking about an external group that imposes itself on the workers. Unions are formed by workers, the leaders are elected by the workers and drawn from the workforce, and unions serve the purpose of negotiating employment terms for the workers.

If you would rather have an argument about political clubs go find a forum where it is not wildly off-topic...

Unions are inherently political. They do things like fund politicians - maybe politicians with views you find offensive.

And they obviously offer to represent your interests but really of course they end up representing their own and powerful people’s.

You've kind of shifted the debate towards over whether any large institution or organization should be allowed to finance or donate or "fund" political campaigns to the degree that they can at present in the US. I would say they shouldn't be able to. Many other liberal democracies do not allow it.

While I support unions in many cases, I would say that many of the arguments against a decision like the one made in Citizens United in favor of unfettered amounts apply to corporations and unions equally. I found Justice Stevens dissenting opinion extremely convincing compared to the concurring and majority opinion. He raised things like: they do not vote, they "survive" the lifespan of the normal human, they disrupt the spirit of democracy and the conceptual underpinnings of liberal democracy, and they manipulate speech into a concept of power and wealth rather than expression and communication.

So, obviously they're political, but in the sense that they are politically active. And so are corporations. Take away the ability to fund, donate to, or finance, politicians and political campaigns from corporations and unions, and you still end up with a situation where unions collectively protect workers from arbitrary change.

...and all of that is true, to a much greater extent, of the corporations whose workers unions represent. Do you think Amazon warehouse workers agree with the views of every politician whose campaign received a contribution from Amazon?

I am a big fan of taking money out of politics and banning campaign contributions from unions, corporations, PACs, lobbying firms, and basically any entity that is not an individual citizen. Unfortunately, until that happens, unions must engage with political campaigns to counter corporate political engagement. Corporations push for politicians to pass union-busting laws and to block pro-union laws; unions push for politicians to block such union-busting and to pass pro-union laws.

As for your other comment, I have to wonder whose interests you think unions are representing when they actually sit down to negotiate pay, benefits, work rules, etc. Do you think that when a union rep says, "No, we need a healthcare plan that has a lower deductible," they are doing so because some politician somewhere benefits from it? Do you think "power people" tell a union that, actually, employees should have their wages adjusted according to both their seniority and the local cost of living? The day-to-day business of a union is its workers' interest, just like the day-to-day business of a corporation is its shareholders' interest, regardless of campaign contributions or support for politicians. If the workers feel that their interests are poorly represented, they can vote for different union leaders; likewise, when shareholders feel that their interests are poorly represented they can elect a different board of directors.

For example in the UK unions funded politicians who voted to invade Iraq. Which worker was that in benefit of?

And powerful people in unions can have regressive ideas. For example pay based on seniority is ageist.

At the end of the day a union is a group of bullies like any other.

What else did those politicians vote on? If your claim is that the union funded politicians because of their support for the invasion of Iraq, that is an extraordinary claim that demands extraordinary proof. Let's see your proof.

[Edit: At the end of the day, union leaders are elected by union members, and if the members do not like how their contract is negotiated they can elect different leaders or otherwise make their voices heard. Call it "bullying" if you want, but I fail to see how non-unionized workers are not being bullied by the companies they work for, given how one-sided negotiations between individual workers and companies are.]

Why does it matter why they funded them? Why are they funding them all all? What is going on the unions are funding one particular political viewpoint?

Read the post you replied to; unions fund politicians who are friendly toward unions because corporations fund politicians who are antagonistic toward unions (or, if we are being charitable, let's say "politicians who are friendly to corporate interests").

They’re friendly forwards unions… oh but by the way they’re also anti-Semitic. No thanks. I don’t want to fund that.

Imagine if for example you were a Green or a Liberal. The idea of funding Labour could be seriously offensive to you.

...because the corporations on the other side of the table would never support antisemites [0], white nationalists [1], fascists [2], or political parties that harbor and support such deplorable people [3]. Not that the workers have any say in who their employers make contributions to.

[0] https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/marjorie-tay...

[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/steven-a-kin...

[2] https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/contributors?id=n00023864

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_(United_State...

I don’t get your argument? Other people fund evil so workers might as well do the same?

Look, I already explained this in my other comments, but you are just ignoring those and repeating anti-union propaganda. Either you are a troll or you are some kind of paid anti-union consultant; if you actually want an answer to your question, read what I wrote again.

You DO see that politics are inevitably tied up in the root cause/purpose of unions though, right? I mean, often it is nakedly political reasons that unions even come to exist in the first place, or this situation with Amazon, for example. Your explanation of what a union is could easily be rewritten for a society made up of constituents electing a candidate drawn from the community to represent them...

What nakedly political reasons do Amazon workers have? They were being told to use a plastic container instead of a bathroom so that they would spend more time working, they were being ordered to put their health and their coworkers' health at risk with inadequate COVID protection, and after more than a year complaining about their working conditions little action was taken (but the workers who complained the loudest were fired for complaining). Amazon management's only response to the effort to unionize in response to all that was to hire consultants to discourage unionization.

Yeah, you are right, the way union representation works is as democratic as political representation. Shareholders also vote on corporate leadership and typically elect other shareholders to the board. That does not make it "political" beyond the internal politics of the organizations involved, and trying to connect those internal politics to the politics involved with government is dishonest.

> What nakedly political reasons do Amazon workers have?

The workers don’t, but the union leaders do.

That’s the point.

Don't B-Corps both (a) show working towards improvement without a union and (b) by their definition consider far more than profit maximization in their core mandate?

You didn't really refute their final point about mandatory union affiliation other than "but that would make it harder for the union". Their point about personal choice stands (and is valid).

Don't B-Corps work for the "public benefit?" That does not necessarily align with the needs or interests of the workers and the profit motive still exists. It is not hard to imagine a B-Corp working for the public interest while still paying its workers too little, offering limited benefits, or even engaging in various abuses of its workforce.

As to the point about mandatory union affiliation, as I said the entire purpose of a union is to allow workers to negotiate the terms of their employment on an equal footing with their company. For the reasons I gave mandatory union membership is necessary; personal choice serves to divide the workers and gives the company an advantage in every negotiation. To put it another way, managers do not have any "personal choice" on their side of the negotiation -- the company negotiates as a collective and the job of individual managers is to negotiate on behalf and for the benefit of the company. So if the workers exercise a "personal choice" to negotiate individually or collectively, the company, which always negotiates as a collective, will have an advantage in every negotiation.

So I suppose it really comes down to whether or not you think it is a problem for a company to have a huge advantage over its workers when negotiating the terms of employment. I personally think it is a problem to give such a large advantage to employers, but I can grant that it is a matter of personal values and worldview, so maybe your values are different. If you do assert that there is no particular problem with companies having such a large advantage, then to be intellectually honest you should not speak of a "market" for employment, because markets do not function effectively when they are so extremely one-sided (see e.g. the failure of the "market" for home ISP service).

> You could just as well say you are giving yourself up to the whims of the union leadership, which is just a parallel management structure. Sure they are supposed to represent your interests, but they're also supposed to balance that against the interests of the company and what is practically possible. So is there really much of a difference?

There's a difference: they are elected by the workers.

I have a vote if I'm in a union. I don't have a vote with my employer except to leave, and the process of finding a new job with a new employer is very long, painful, and uncertain.

If you're skilled and valuable it's also really painful and uncertain for your employer; that's your "vote"

You have to be careful with this line of reasoning.

In the absence of a social safety net, being "not skilled" or "not valuable" from the perspective of an employer easily becomes being not valuable as a person, they "deserve" what happens to them because they are at fault. When your employer is your source of healthcare, retirement, and livelihood, the idea that it can arbitrarily control the basis of your health and dignity is grotesque.

The line of reasoning seems fine when you are "skilled and valuable" from the perspective of your employer, but you might not be seen that way. Insisting that someone pays some price for that beyond simply not ending up wealthy is needlessly cruel. Despite our focus on it, there is more to life than being subservient to profit.

I know people that are skilled and valuable, but they still don't have the savings to fund their life for an extended period of time. And since they live in a country that doesn't pay reasonable unemployment money, they can only switch jobs when the jobs line up perfectly. Saying "this sucks, I quit" is not an option for them. They have family that relies on them. The employer nearly always has the better negotiation position.

When I leave a company the company loses out on a cog in their wheel. When a company leaves me, they also take from me a way to access healthcare, which is life-threatening given my medical profile. It's not really the same.

You can still access healthcare for a period of time under COBRA.

https://www.healthcare.gov/unemployed/cobra-coverage/

This law was passed to address employment gaps as you described.

If you can't get a new job in that time, then it's time to look for a ACA solution for unemployed workers (insurance premiums limited to a percentage of income) or apply for disability or some other issue depending on your circumstances.

Health care insurance is pretty well subsidized for the unemployed and the poor, the issue is that providers zap the middle class with unexpected bills and extremely high bills that are not covered by insurance. E.g. the old losing your savings because of a snake-bite problem, which can hit both the employed and the unemployed.

Back when I lived in SF, SF General famously refused to accept insurance from anyone. Their entire business model was to charge outrageous bills and give free care to the indigent. That's why you'd get these 100K bills for a broken ankle.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/7/18137967/er...

That's the big nightmare scenario for healthcare patients in the U.S.

I would go even further:there should be a free market of unions for workers and employees to choose from. If you believe that the virtues of markets are absolute, then having complete freedom for unions should be the norm: they would autoregulate themselves and be beneficials for the workers, the companies and the society. I genuinely believe that if you are against unions, you are more communist than capitalist.

There can never be a true free market for unions because there’s such a big network effect bonus from everyone in your company/industry being in the same union.

but many large companies have too deal with multiple Unions anyway. a metal mill for example will have to deal with the teamsters for their truck drivers, united steel worker for anyone working the floor, Service Employees International Union for security guards and janitor, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers for the electricians the service any of the electrical equipment, and any of a number of unions for the office staff.