Maybe that's true of low labor jobs, but Employees in six figure jobs have tremendous power.
One of the reasons companies try to create anti-potching rules is exactly to try to get back some power.
The unemployment rate in the US was 4% prior to covid, and even lower for tech and white collar desk jobs.
This issue simply must take a back seat to bigger problems in America.
What if labor rights is actually the single biggest problem that drives all the others?
I can think of things like a higher minimum wage, paid sick leave, anti-discrimination in hiring, maternity/paternity leave, and guaranteed PTO that could be helped by unionization to make us a stronger country, collectively.
And no, leveraging a union to force your company to drop a controversial customer has absolutely nothing to do with labor rights, that's just taking advantage of a organization your tribe happens to control
Unions could absolutely have an impact on racial discrimination and wealth disparities.
[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-walmart-the-ceo-makes-1-188-...
It's okay, society can handle more than one issue at a time.
1. https://www.wired.com/story/how-kickstarter-employees-formed...
You may be right. I don't know enough about those specific dynamics to argue against it. It doesn't feel right to me, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. It does bring to mind professional sports in the US - Football, Basketball, and Baseball. All have player unions, and all have players that make six figures at minimum, with a fair amount making tens or millions and some making hundreds of millions. But, the NFL is famous for having the most toothless union, and, as a result, its players have the worst contracts/conditions - by a wide margin. It seems to me that unions could still help people who make six figures.
One issue I saw with the pre-Covid job market is that it's too often all or none. Either you spend a ton of time and resources getting a position that pays well and then asks you to work 60+ hours a week, or you take a job that lets you scrape by (even if those positions still ask its workers to put in a lot of hours). It's hard to find balance in either situation, and unions could help restore some of that balance to both situations.
>One of the reasons companies try to create anti-potching rules is exactly to try to get back some power.
What I've read indicates that anti-poching rules are BS. They seem to exist so that employers can control their employees without adequately compensating them. Pay for talent or let it walk.
>The unemployment rate in the US was 4% prior to covid, and even lower for tech and white collar desk jobs.
Beside the point, but the 4% figure doesn't account for gig work, underemployment, or people who have stopped trying. I believe you, and it makes sense, that white collar desk jobs would be in better shape than lower-class positions.
>This issue simply must take a back seat to bigger problems in America.
The hollowing of the middle class is as big as any issue imo, and if we prioritize building the middle class, it will aid in solving many of our other issues. As far as I can tell, nothing would help bring people out of poverty more than a strong union presence.
Are your union members actually paid by the hour or are these hours tracked to justify/demand a certain headcount of salaried union members?
The tracking of work affects future contracts, though, because management (particularly at the corporate level) is continually looking to cut hours and positions, and the union looks to justify keeping them.
In non-union jobs I've worked, those hours/positions get cut without meaningful pushback, and the workers left were forced to do more work without receiving more compensation.
For seemingly silly rules like the ones you're describing, the union is attempting to protect jobs and hours.
I wish my union was more like some European unions I've read about, where they're involved in the decision-making process. Mine fights for wages, positions, and conditions, but management decides how things work - so long as they're not violating the agreed-upon conditions. I expect your workplace is similar. Instead of mapping out a path with management, my union reacts to the path set out by management, and I think a lot of the weird rules come as a result of reacting, rather than helping to create.
I also think this sort of collaboration would be better for companies, particularly larger companies, where there is a disconnect from how things actually work and how corporate thinks they work. We have this particularly terrible piece of machinery that corporate is obsessed with justifying. We have other machines that do its jobs better, but it does the jobs of many machines - just much worse. It just wastes a lot of time, but corporate incentiveses management to use it, and when discussing the POS machine, management cites those incentives as reasons for why the machine is actually good. When you say, "Yes, but how does wasting all this time using this particular machine help the company?" management highlights the incentives.