Sounds like unions were yesterday's solution. Now that we have the benefit of hindsight, it seems like we should be able to do better.

It's bordering delusional to me to argue that unions are obsolete with all the "sharing-economy" dystopia and more being spouted about. Especially in the case of the US that never really had a continuously strong labor movement, which is clearly reflected in its laws and regulations.

Exactly - especially when so many "sharing economy" style jobs exploit defining workers as independent self-employed contractors instead of employees, a critical distinction to avoid paying for benefits that employees are often legally entitled to.

This is why Uber spend so much money fighting cases about the classification of their drivers work status in virtually every country they operate in. Most western countries have laws designed to prevent companies exploiting employees by reclassifying them as contractors, especially for low paying or low skilled jobs. The recent Uber employment case in the U.K. Is a great example, and is precisely the kind of problem unions were historically good at dealing with.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/...

Indeed. Another example, that may hit closer to home for the readers of this site, would be the idea of the "inherent" need for unpaid overtime which must not be labeled systematic, but is just coincidentally repeating.

"But IT has unique demands requiring it!". That the same trick is used from literal sweatshops and up must therefor also be a coincidence.

Is it possible to make a company that doesn't pay a "living wage" to its employees without being accused of abuse and exploitation?

Serious question, what if I made a small side business just for fun where I paid school children peanuts to run errands for me? Soon, those kids grow up and are still working for me and are now angry with me that I am paying them peanuts when their livelihoods and families depend on me. Yet I don't have enough to give a "living wage" with benefits - I just wanted a fun little side business for the school kids - not support everyone's entire family...

Can you come up with another example that doesn't sound like Child Exploitation? We should stick to one form of abuse at a time.

Sure - I have a farm that I run. A high schooler asks if I'll hire him so he can make an extra buck. I say sure - I'll pay 10 cents per egg that he gathers.

Soon he drops out of high school and demands to be paid a living wage with health benefits since I am now his source of income. The other egg gatherers unionize with him and threaten to strike if I don't. I fire them all and scrap the business instead because I can't afford to pay them all a living wage with benefits without making my eggs way more expensive than the competition.

Do you have an example that doesn't involve children at all? I am not touching one with them because of the other needless complications they introduce.

What do you have in mind?

I'm currently part of a consulting firm. It essentially manages and provides labor to paying customers. It provides benefits to the maximum extent allowed by law. That is, we are often frustrated by the law when we want to provide better benefits. One example is retirement savings. We would provide more, but the law prevents us.

If an employee is doing good work, the customer paying for it will let us know. If an employee isn't, the customer will let us know. Most of the time, we'll find a better fit for that employee. Rarely, we'll let them go. When an employee wants to move on, they can find another position within what we offer or they can find new business and bring that in. They'll get a share of that.

To be honest, this sounds like a (more) authoritarian version of a union, where it's led by a dictator/owner rather than an admittedly flawed democracy, and capable of the same flaws unions are vulnerable to.

For workers, what makes this ambivalent dictatorship arrangement categorically better than a union hall?

I think any honest examination of the question is going to conclude that employers and their employees often have opposing interests and the lack of collective bargaining makes it much easier for employers to have their way in a relationship that is wildly imbalanced in the first place (I mean, really, compare the stakes of one worker's job for the employee and employer). We are in a profession where we are far more insulated from the ill effects of this than others; I think a lot of people posting here forget that.

I'm not sure how this solves the same problem as unions do.