Another option would be to join forces to collectively demand more equitable distribution of the fruits of technological development. Sadly it doesn't seem to be very popular.
Strange enough the people that have the most to gain from keeping things the same, are really successful at convincing the masses who have the most to benefit from change in this regard to vote against it.
https://pjhollis123.medium.com/careful-mate-that-foreigner-w...
The problem I have with unions is that they can be too unreasonable. They're too much on the other side, they're too hardline just like the ultracapitalists/neoliberals but on the other side. In a good system we wouldn't have to fight for our rights because we'd already have them anyway.
You have fallen for capitalist propaganda. Time to re-evaluate.
Note: I'm not living in the US obviously :)
I do say a balance because of course we're not living in a communist state. So even with a socialist government there is still capitalism. Just not unrestrictedly so as it is in the US.
I'm not sure how it works in the US but in our company the union is many bitching about stupid stuff like breastfeeding rooms (when there are no women who bring their babies to work anyway - they just work from home after their 6 months maternity leave). All our basic rights are already sorted. We can't work too many hours, we have unlimited sick leave (though of course validated by a doctor for long absences), we're entitled to a lot of money when fired etc. But this is all national law level stuff. Not industry level.
Having strong and independent unions is how you keep a good socialist government. Almost anytime you hear “With a good government, you don’t need <whatever>”, you are hearing a recipe for guaranteeing that good government is an exceptional, transitory state. If your society isn't prepared for bad government, it will have one sooner than you’d like, and it will be difficult to dislodge it.
A true committed exclusionary socialist.
The bad thing is they converted the welfare room for this which was used all the time :(
I really needed that place because of the move to hotdesking so I'm constantly sitting besides blabby sales people. Formerly we had an IT floor where people knew concentration is sometimes needed. So I'd go there to sit in silence and de-stress for a while.
But I have to say the company is good otherwise, I told them about my difficulty and the H&S people let me work from home much more than others.
I hate the way companies are going back from full remote to hybrid hotdesking though because that is the worst of both worlds.
Nothing about your example is an overreach of unions. In fact, it is a perfect example of the value of organised labour.
In honour of recent comments by dang, I won't be as direct as I'd historically be and instead invite you to think about - in the grand scheme of things - how accessibility, including expressing mothers, may be a societal and absolute good.
As a secondary exercise, maybe it's worth thinking about the ethics of presence sensors.
You claim you’re trying to balance individualism and collectivism but don’t actually support things that make collectivism work so you end up de facto supporting individualism.
Its a way to support individualism while allowing people to feel extra good about themselves for supporting collectivist ideas, on paper.
But where I live we just have strong labour rights from the government so individual unions fighting for each type of labour's rights are not needed as much. Sometimes they are, when there are specific risks like chemicals that they work with. But for overall "not get taken advantage of" stuff, it's just not needed so much.