It's fair enough to say that American auto unions (and very importantly, auto company management and ownership) would do well to model themselves after Germany's system. It's not a universal truth that all our unions are ineffective.
You could say that about many different things: if we just did it like the Germans, everything would be better, right? But how exactly do you actually do that? We're not Germany. You could go to Zimbabwe or El Salvador and tell them the same thing ("just be like the Germans or Japanese and you won't have all these social problems!"), but that isn't realistic; if it was that easy, every country would be copying the Germans and Japanese.
As for a universal truth, I haven't seen any evidence yet that unions in America actually work well. In Germany, yes, but this isn't Germany.
I could compare all companies to the worst examples too (e.g. all startups are Theranos) but that would never be taken seriously nor would it be fair yet somehow with unions that level of analysis is taken seriously.
Well, I'm pretty sure those auto jobs in Canada were also high paying and unionized.
Source: I worked for one through University.
That just supports my argument even more. It's not unions that are the problem, it's unions in America.
That's because, in the US, it's all true, historically. Auto unions were a big reason why Detroit's automakers were so uncompetitive against the Japanese automakers in the 80s; autoworkers got ridiculous pay for menial work, which is why Detroit moved a lot of their production to Mexico and Canada, and other automakers moved to Southern states where unions didn't exist.
The simple fact is that unions in the US in the latter half of the 20th century and beyond were nothing like unions in Germany, where by almost all accounts they seem to work out extremely well.
>Most people in Europe may not actively be a part of a union, but they normally recognize them as beneficial entities in the labor market
Yes, in Europe that's true. In America, it just hasn't been the case. It's just like public transit: in Germany, trains and subways are fantastic: they're inexpensive, clean, and efficient; whereas in America, they're an utter disaster: dirty, expensive, constant maintenance problems, and just a miserable experience. Try riding the subway in Munich, and then riding the subway in NYC or DC; there's just no comparison. The problem isn't that subways are bad, it's that subways in America are bad. Same goes for unions.