The problem is you switch having almost no negotiating power against the employer as an individual... to having almost no negotiating power against the union as an individual. You're just trading masters and you don't get any more say. If you are young for example, and the union wants pay to be by seniority, then the union may be working against your interests and you could be better off negotiating with the company.

That is a more fundamental issue than whether or not you have Unions, and that's the out-of-control scaling of the economy. Companies have become so big that individuals are insignificant, period, outside of a few elites. If corporations were kept within healthy limits, unions wouldn't have to be equally huge to keep pace. The law of large numbers demands that individuals get reduced to statistics. Statistics get measured, they don't get to negotiate! Individual misery can be averaged entirely out of the picture.

Unions are a response to a shitty situation, and they have flaws. Not having unions, in the face of dwindling individual share in a growing economy, that's even worse.

Well that is the fault of the #1 union in the center of the north American continent... The US federal government, which is there to represent "We the People" not the corporations, or political parties, k-street lobbies, or any of that other nonsense.

I think you deeply misunderstand the way the US government functions. Let's start with: it's not a Trade Union. That's some audacious spin.

How it functions, or how its suppose to function, or rather how the elites want it to function?

Or maybe its all nonsense because repeatedly people in the US have shown a susceptibility to propaganda and a willingness to vote against their own best interest? Or for that matter to vote for politicians that refuse to take stances which deviate from the party talking points.

The way it actually functions is to reward those who are able to organize, and repeatedly that has been overwhelmingly those with money and resources to devote to such organization. That means wealthy elites and corporations, who have lobbyists and PR firms working for them. Individuals who are not able to organize at scale are not represented. The PR war against trade unions is part of the effort to suppress the influence of those lacking large bank accounts or leisure time.

To reply to the later bit about spin...

Fundamentally, the us government is there to represent the interests of the citizens. Or if you go back far enough the states, which in turn are there for the citizens. Unless you buy into the idea that really the representative nature of the government is to represent the interests of the wealth elite and make it appear that the people have a say by electing their representatives. Something that I think the 17th amendment/etc tries to clear up...

Labor unions are there to represent the interests of labor.

Given that the majority of voting age people in the us, fall into the labor category there is a fairly large crossover of common interests between labor unions and general government when it comes to economic issues.

Representing the interests of its citizens is "How it's supposed to work" but the way it actually works is that politicians represent the people who have real influence over getting them elected. That means anyone who isn't very rich or the leader of a big voting bloc has no influence.

As I mention in my cousin-comment, our system is set up to reward those who can organize, which the wealthy elite and large corporations are much better at than the population of individuals with divisive identity politics being shoved down their throats by PR companies. Breaking people's ability to organize is why there is such a push to convince us that trade unions are evil.

I see the logic but still have to dissent. The needs of labor are sometimes at odds with the needs of any given community or the nation as a whole. Pork-barrel spending is a thing, and it has a negative connotation because it's not necessarily good for everyone, even if it can be good for labor. So, some politicians are elected to prevent it, to varying degrees. This is the (a?) way in which the government is not a labor union, even at the conceptual level.

That's not how it works for actors, though...