That doesn't make the concept of a union bad. They worked much better 50 years ago, even. It's a great concept, but the implementation got corrupted over the years.

I don't think we'll fix unions' reputations without first fixing unions. And we really need more unions and more credible unions.

As a footnote, in my local school district, under coronavirus school closures, the teacher's union negotiated that the teachers get paid, but they don't need to remotely teach students. Some teachers continue teaching for some amount of time, but essentially on a volunteer basis. Many teachers are just sitting at home, doing nothing except for collecting a pay check.

And so they shouldn't! In many (most?) US states, the public schools are unconditionally funded by the state based on student enrollment figures. Cutting teacher pay during a closure under such a system would be a purely greedy move.

I don't know how it works in the majority of states but I know the model of mostly state funding based upon student enrollment is not universal. In my state the majority of funding is from local tax revenues. For example the budget for my local school district is approximately $1.3 billion. $370 million comes from the state and $30 million comes from the federal government. Another $40 million comes from "misc other sources" and $860 million comes from local tax revenue.

Sources: https://edsource.org/2019/californias-school-funding-flaws-m...

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_203.20.a...

My wife taught K12 for 12 years and then became an instructional coach teaching teachers how to teach. There's a shitload of work if you want to do it right, and at least half (in our district anyway) will stretch themselves extremely thin to do so. Half of the rest are 9-5'ers and the remainder are shitheads.

Perceived equity issues fed into this as well. The result, of course, is that parents who have time to teach kids have kids who are learning, while the vast majority of the district is learning nothing. With remote learning, the results would be less differential. But I guess the districts feels worse about inequities it contributes to than ones that arise out of inaction. We have a 1:1 program, so all students have technology.

But I would the union preempted this, and is what made this discussion moot.

There was a fairly recent ruling from the SCOTUS that struck down compelling non union members to pay union dues. It was as recently as 2018 or 2019. Cant remember the case name, but it originated in Illinois (a very, very pro union state).

Sure, cooperation sounds good in theory, but don't we have examples (in the US) of where management of a company and management of their union ended up very friendly at the expense of the workers? I'm pretty sure I read about stuff like that in the context of the recent automotive union corruption scandals.

I say try it maybe in one state and see how it goes.

My company recently granted an extra 40 hours of COVID PTO to use for flex, which is nice, but they could just stop trying to work around labor laws.

I had another experience in college where the TA union put up barriers for undergraduate students who weren't TAs to apply for university teaching opportunities. Any discussions or office hours must be held in the presence of a TA and if your schedule didn't work out then tough luck.

Yes, if you're making a union film you need to hire union members for positions covered by the union agreement. But unless your studio has signed an agreement with the unions, you're not subject to union rules. Generally, only the big studios and the bigger indies are subject to the Hollywood union rules.

If you don't abide by union rules then you're not eligible for certain awards or screenings.

This doesn't apply to the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, or other major awards. Many of the films nominated for these awards every year don't abide by union rules because their weren't subject to them.

When building your home, you have the option of hiring non-union workers. Workers have the option of not joining the union. The union essentially acts as a service provider to the independent workers. These individuals charge quite a bit more than non-union workers, but often have astounding levels of competence, productivity, and workmanship.

When a company is unionized, none of those things are true. Instead of the union being a de facto endorsement of a particular worker, it acts to protect its own power over the workers. Instead of the company having a choice about who to hire for a particular role, it is forced into one choice. Instead of workers joining a union for their own benefit, they are forced to join because of legal coercion. The union is highly motivated to control and limit its members--freedom for the members means destruction of the union.

All of the statements in that paragraph are false.

When I see "unions" such as "game worker unite" which is more of a communist political party than a union, or what Kickstarter union wants (have more say on what campaigns can be featured on Kickstarter or not, which is not what a union should be about), I understand why American unions have such a bad rep. These 2 examples aren't what unions should be about. What does a say in moderation policies on a platform has to do with worker conditions? Nothing.