I would never join a union.
"I would never join a union" is a pretty easy thing to say if you are in a job with decent pay, a labour market that wants your skills, and have reasonably good working conditions.
Amazon warehouse manager.
With an unemployment rate as drastically low as many right to work states, wage inflation becomes a big issue, so companies hire less efficient employees.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/could-rising-wages-scuttle...
Now explain why unionized European programmers don't get paid nearly the same as un-unionized American ones. Is it because of fascism or something?
Do you have any data or reason to believe "unionized European programmers don't get paid nearly the same as un-unionized American ones?"
Does it show which of these are "UNIONIZED European programmers" and how many are "NON-UNION Americans?" If not, we can dismiss the claim outright.
All you can say at that point is "I'm too lazy to confirm or disprove it". If you want to disprove his statement for real, you're going to have to put in some effort looking things up.
I'd be happy to be disproven (go unions!), but I haven't heard of other countries that have unionized programmers.
Same reason I will never buy a home with a HOA.
Some people feel that they’ll do better negotiating with a multi billion dollar company. Others are unable to think ahead/strategically and focus on the 3% fee or whatever.
When you’re working for a company that manages you as tightly as Amazon does, it ridiculous to not have a union, if only for having some recourse with respect to work rules. My wife works for a local government where a bunch of the guys made a big show out of opting out of the union, they regretted that when a new administration came in and started targeting them for petty rule violations - eventually they were all forced out and replaced by cheaper people.
Let's assume the absolute best of intent, no corruption, etc. There is some good, of course. I won't deny this. I'm not going to talk about the upside, but please don't whataboutism me simply because i'm going to talk about the downsides - you asked whether it is irrational. It is no more irrational than any other moral/ethical/etc viewpoint that someone chooses over a financial one. I am plenty aware of the history and good they have done, and the horrible labor practices they helped put an end to. I just do not happen to be an ends justify means kind of person.
their are a few countries where union equivalents have an explicit goal/requirements/etc around societal good - i have no issues there, the rest of this is about the ones that don't.
For unions, overall, their goal is not to help society, it is to protect and help their members. They have no duty to society whatsoever. In the extreme, that ends up bad for anyone not their members.
That is, they do everything they can only to get their members more money, more benefits, protect their jobs, etc. This sort of thing comes at a cost too.
So they make it harder to fire bad cops, bad teachers, etc.
When a municipality or state would be bankrupted by paying pensions, the unions will force them into bankruptcy at a cost to everyone else. The unions will first force them to raise pensions, too, to unpayable levels. The state/municipality has essentially no practical power against its workforce in that situation, so it agrees, again, at a cost to everyone else. The unions of course, do not care about the consequences for anyone else. They want it paid anyway.
I have no issue with pushing for a living wage, etc. But again, it's for their members, not for everyone, except where they believe it will generate more union membership.
So sum total, they do not care about anyone else. Literally. It's not their job.
This is awesome for their members. Horrible for everyone else.
So no, it's not irrational. Not everyone wants to group themselves with organizations designed to literally not care about anyone else.
Follow the US-style unions to their logical extreme - everyone in society in is a union, divided by job. Yay!?
I think that ends very badly for society - you really think the unions won't paint other jobs/unions/etc as the enemy? They do in plenty of cases already! So - i think it will end up the same sort of strong polarization/hate that exists across political affiliation, but across jobs instead. Great.
My wife worked for the National Education Association for 15 years. I can't recall a single positive comment that she made about the union. The way the contracts are structured, educators get locked in to their home district after 5-10 years. They are useless for mediating anything but issues that are already written up in the contract and the ability for loafers to coast for the entirety of their career is commonly discussed and real. She would avoid the union because it coddles losers and doesn't lift a finger for staff dealing with real issues.
The only partial success story with unions that I'm aware of is with my brother, a lineman for AT&T. He's had that job for almost 30 years (through a variety of telcos ultimately renamed AT&T) and has been a member of the Communication Workers of America. He talks about endless frustration with the union, that the reps are useless and that the contracts they negotiate are terrible. But he does have the ability to tell his management to fuck off if they ask him to do something dangerous (which happens rarely but enough to matter) and he takes advantage of that from time to time. He might re-up for a union, i don't know.