This is all about what principle you are applying and whether it scales or not. It is a bit like restraining order. In some specific instances it might be safe to let the person in your house. However that kind of hurts the overall restraining order terms and sometime in future you can get into trouble.
Just like in a democracy, not everybody's interests can be fully satisfied in a union. So what? That doesn't necessarily mean we'd all be better off with autocracy or without any government whatsoever, not even the people getting the short end of the stick.
The fundamental problem in Santa Cruz, like many other universities in the state, is the cost of housing. UC Santa Cruz didn't build enough housing. Part of the problem is that most of UCSC's land is wildlife refuge, and part of the problem (like everywhere else in California) is the political and regulatory difficulty of building new housing. The cost of housing has been increasing far faster than UCSC's budget.
ref: https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/whats-law/employees/i...
I know the same thing is happening at UCSD, where the student body exploded in size and despite additional housing being built, it is insufficient and very expensive.
It doesn't always work, in some industries I can see the relationship is much more confrontational and damaging, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Considering that many, many countries exist where this is the case (most of the time), this seems to be very well founded.
> Hermes: So you're telling me I could fire my whole staff and hire Grunka Lunkas at half the cost?
> Glurmo: That's right. They think they have a good union but they don't. [whispering] They're basically slaves.
Again without implying anything normative, what makes you claim that the students' representation by the union isn't "fair"? Simply because they want more than stipulated by the contract the union was able to negotiate? Is my (non-union) salary "unfair" because I'd much rather get paid 3x as much (or 30x, for that matter)?
That is very definition of 'Unions'. As an individual you have limited resources to take on a big adversary (employer) hence few people come together and pool in money. If this process is voluntary it is entirely up-to them to come up with the terms of engagement. Once you agree to those terms going back on those terms must be seen as dishonesty. If the union membership is forces them obviously union leaders have zero incentives to actually offer better terms to members.
The only way this can be resolved is by having some kind of "enlightened" union leadership. The superhumans who will instantly know what is the right thing to do and will have 100% freedom to do so. Sadly, such humans are very very rare.
Can anyone give me their actual experience being in a union that's not in the tech industry?
Like, medical mistakes are already crazy common -- and that's with the strict barriers of entry.
And, tell me how not having any union is better for all than an imperfect union.
Obvious answer: No dues. Not commenting on whether that's a good tradeoff, mind, but it's an answer.
Note that I'm not making any _moral or normative claims_ about not striking vs striking vs wildcat striking, nor about the interplay of rights and obligations between individual workers, unions, and employers. I'm speaking purely strategically here, in the same frame as your comment.
You're only looking at first-order dynamics here, while second-order ones are often in play. In this case, the 54 students weren't just striking, they were wildcat-striking: striking in defiance of not just the university they work for, but the union that represents them, who had already agreed to a contract with the university.
When the union has already agreed to, ratified, and entered into a contract, capitulating to a wildcat strike a couple of years later is a significant departure from even relatively pro-labor norms. Again, from a purely strategic perspective, the costs of this specific incident are potentially a lot less significant than the future costs of the university signaling that they're okay with contracts becoming meaningless if the other party changes their mind in the middle of the term.