And this case why on earth where professional roles being represented by an Auto workers union.
An innovation in organized labour from around the turn of the 20th century known as the "industrial union" (as opposed to the "craft union") wherein the union seeks to organized all workers in a particular industry rather than a particular job. The idea is that this prevents workers of different jobs being pitted against one another, and provides more power as a strike could shut down an entire industry.
Trying to go back to the ancient one big union just wont cut it
However, what is allowed is to require people who are hired to join the union, with the exception that if they do not want to join the union, they can opt to pay only "financial core" dues, to compensate the union for its work negotiating an agreement that the non-members supposedly benefit from too. The effect of this is that workers remain governed by collective bargaining, pay a lesser amount than members, and have no say in union leadership. They are also exempt from union discipline (ex fines for strikebreaking).
In some states, with so-called "right to work" laws, the employees who do not want to join the union pay nothing at all. This is actually not inherently a right of the states to make such laws, but an option they are delegated as part of the federal laws. After a recent SCOTUS ruling, all government employees can do this in any state.
In any case, what OP said is true re: our collective bargaining system is built around one union (whether or not everyone is required to pay dues) representing all workers, whose pay/benefits/other matters cannot vary from the union contract. Whether or not non-members must pay any dues
As to your point, the names for the old unions are largely historic vestiges. The "Big Labor" unions are massive conglomerates (just like the companies they rail against) that grow as big as they can. Ironically, the true hard-leftists like the IWW originally advocated for "One Big Union" as opposed to small, factional unions for each trade--but they would hardly be pleased with the highly-capitalist mammoth unions we have today.
If you are philosophically opposed to unions, you shouldn't have to pay them at all.
You don't. Work somewhere else.
And to loop back around to the topic most of us are discussing, if there were some type of SWE Guild, standardizing rules around FOSS usage and remuneration for FOSS creators and maintainers should be high on that guild's list of priorities. There're thousands of people in the entertainment industry making comfortable livings off a combination of some work and residuals; why can't that be us? Why shouldn't people who've created, maintained, and improved projects that companies have leveraged for billions of dollars of profit see some of that money?
What you said is cool and all but I am still waiting for my money for all of the open source software that you are using.
Sane countries make you pay only if you want to participate in the union (such as when you vote).
EDIT: There's a bit of an exception. For example, in universities, sometimes graduate students have a union and faculty have a union. It doesn't make sense to place them both in the same union because the faculty boss graduate students around. However, it would make sense for the two unions to cooperate against the administration.
EDIT2: Another reason unions should be as concentrated as possible is so they form a united front against the bosses. If every employee is in a different union, how can they achieve anything without great difficulty?
Wut?! TIL where people got the belief that single communist party could rule democratically. We all know how about those experiments played out in history
For an example of how this works in practice, look at the UAW’s conduct with UC’s grad students.
Years ago, they negotiated salary caps for grad students, and then negotiated contracts that severely cut health care benefits for women over their own members’ objections. Getting anything done involves baroque red tape, so even complaining about this sort of thing would take dozens of people multiple months (and almost certainly wouldn’t cause the union bosses to take action).
Recently, they ratified contracts when the rank and file protested at union meetings, and some UC campuses voted against the contract.
This led to illegal “wildcat” strikes where the students walked out because they couldn’t pay rent. The university then fired them.
This was only possible because of closed shops. If people want to switch unions, they should be allowed to.