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Comment by Veserv | Hacker News Reader

A key problem in the US is that in a unionized job you are legally required to be represented by the union. Union membership is non-voluntary.

If you think you are part of that top percentage or even if you think that the union is not representing your interests, tough luck. It is illegal to quit or reorganize like-minded individuals to form your own that better represents you. To reform the union you need to get 50% of the members to vote for change instead of just forming a new, smaller organization that represents your interests.

This is in contrast to many European unions where you can choose to join because you think they provide worthwhile benefits. Or you can choose to not join because it does not. Unions need to compete on benefits to their members and are thus incentivized to provide better benefits.

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Voluntary unions have a free rider problem. You may choose to join the union because you believe it's the right thing to do, but the benefits are rarely worth the dues. Non-members also benefit from collective bargaining, but they have a bit more money to spend.

Legal representation is probably the main exception. Other benefits you could just pay on your own, but unions are the easiest way to get access to lawyers specialized in labor issues, and they will often represent you for free.

The bigger difference between American and European unions is that Europe tends to treat union membership as sensitive personal information. Your employer has no legitimate reason to know whether you are a union member, and it's not allowed to ask. The union is also generally not allowed to tell its members which of their colleagues are members. Many of the issues surrounding American unions just disappear when union membership has no impact on your daily job.

Voluntary unions do not have a free rider problem. That is only the case if you legally require collective bargaining to apply to non-union members (as is the case in the US).

For instance, in Germany [1] collective bargaining agreements are agreements between employers and unions, and are only required to be applied to union members. Companys may voluntarily choose to extend those same benefits to non-union members. Despite the fact that unions are voluntary in Germany, they still have significant union membership as a whole and German unions are frequently held up as a good example of the benefits of unions to both workers and society which is evidence against the claim that it is necessary to legally enforce union membership.

[1] https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.86564...

There are plenty of incentives, practical reasons, and even legal requirements for extending the benefits to non-members. Germany also has a mechanism for declaring a collective bargaining agreement generally binding, which means that it applies to everyone working in the field in every company.

Also in the US, when Unions were starting to get going, the "good" ones that stood on principles and tried to do right by their members had their leadership harassed and even murdered by oligarchs and the government. The corruptible ones were allowed to exist, and be corrupted as another means of control, and for the anti-union people to point at as proof that unions "don't work".

Reading up on this has been eye-opening, they didn't teach much about it in school, except maybe a paragraph in the history textbook about the Ludlow Massacre. They don't mention at all the IWW or other leftist unions from the 1910s and 20s. If they mention the Taft–Hartley Act, they don't talk about how it targeted "communist" union leaders, and left "capitalist" unions alone.

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