At best, they do what the majority of their members want. Which may be completely at odds with your interests.

For example a union of mainly older members voting for pay-by-seniority and damaging younger people’s pay.

Democracy in a union can become a tyranny of the majority. That’s one reason many people don’t want unions.

Isn't that democracy everywhere though? And it's still better than any of the alternatives by a significant margin.

> Isn't that democracy everywhere though? And it's still better than any of the alternatives by a significant margin.

Yes it is. Which is fine for something like a country where I don't have any hope of negotiating with the government individually, and where I don't have any choice in which country I'm part of.

But I'm not sure it's what I want for my job, where I can already negotiate directly with my employer, and where I can leave for other options if I don't like the offer. I'm trading one master that I need to persuade and negotiate with (employer) for two (employer and union leaders and their majority block). That sounds worse not better to me.

A union is great if you're part of the majority. If you're part of a minority in some regard... then yikes good luck.

Yes and no. If James Damore had worked for the NY Times, the Newspaper Guild leadership might have loathed him, but it would have fought for his job.

I dont think thats the case at all. I am not sure what qualifies as a minority, but the union where I work has been instrumental in ensuring that disabled employees have access to tools they need to do their job and the support they need. They help when restructuring brings redundancies, they negotiate retraining packages for people etc.

You have fallen into the Us v Them trap that benefits employers. Your employer does not see you as significantly different to any other employee, even if you think you are. You have more in common with the other employees than you do with mid and senior level management.

Consider it this way, if you died on the way into work tomorrow, your colleagues would mourn and miss you, your employer would be typing up the job post whilst wondering if they could get someone cheaper this time.

I genuinely think you have some serious misunderstandings about what a union can and does do for its members. I don't know of one union that would prevent you from negotiating your own contract or terms and conditions. What you will find is that the bare minimum of acceptable terms has already been agreed with the union so you are starting negotiations 1-step up from where you would be without them. What this means for you is that you aren't using some of your powers of persuasion to ensure you have e.g. 14 days leave per year, you can now use that leeway to negotiate dental or medical, or whatever else you value.

I would just point out that employee unions are pretty strong in Europe, not over powered, but we have maternity pay, sick leave and generous annual leave allowances. In the US you dont like unions, have woefully inadequate annual leave, sick pay, maternity pay etc.

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

In the same way it seems like US employees don't see themselves as employees but as business owners/managers who haven't quite achieved their position as yet and a union would be detrimental to them when they are in that role even if it would benefit them right now.

> instrumental in ensuring that disabled employees have access to tools they need to do their job and the support they need

Accommodating disabled employees is a majority view. The majority of people agree with it. As we said, unions are democratic so how did this action get implemented if it wasn’t a majority view? The problem is when you’re in a minority view.

> Your employer does not see you as significantly different to any other employee

And the union doesn’t see me as significantly different to any other member. Just another infinitely small vote they can disregard if they want. What’s the difference? At least there's some impact on my employer if I quit. There's none to a union!

> You have more in common with the other employees

Until you don’t. Like a more senior workforce voting for pay based on seniority when you’re younger.

> Consider it this way, if you died on the way into work tomorrow, your colleagues would mourn and miss you, your employer would be typing up the job post whilst wondering if they could get someone cheaper this time.

I don’t need people to mourn and miss me - I need good pay and conditions.

> I genuinely think you have some serious misunderstandings about what a union can and does do for its members.

I disagree so I must just be mistaken rather than genuinely having a different opinion?

> I don't know of one union that would prevent you from negotiating your own contract or terms and conditions.

Many unions agree union rates which can only be negotiated by the union and the employer. You as an individual get locked out. Not all unions do... but when it becomes the majority view...

> In the US you dont like unions

I’m British. One of the very worst things about unions here is most of them fund one particular political party! That alone is crazy to me. I think many many people would find it extremely offensive to be funding that party.

I don’t want to get involved in it.

I’m sure unions are in some cases great for individuals, just like some employers are great for individuals. But I don’t think they’re really any more benevolent. Both are looking out for their own overall interests and I’m the little guy and if I want what they don’t I’m stuck.

Given that, why get a union involved? Why do I want to negotiate with two sometimes-less-than-benevolent masters rather than one?

Can you understand I may disagree rather than just insisting I’m ignorant?

Do you feel you are a top earner in your field? If not, do you think you will become a top earner in your field?

Do you know if you earn more than your colleagues?

No and no (never realistically going to be that outside something like Google in Mountain View). No I've never asked them.

You think a union would make everyone be paid like a senior at Google? Yeah....

What does that matter?

Many governments have been built in ways to try to mitigate this. For example, in the US we have the electoral college and the Senate (where each state has an equal vote). Not saying I support the electoral college (I don't), but at least there's some thought behind it...

Another example is the parliamentary system where each party gets some type of representation in the government and where absolute majorities are rare.

Point being that governments, while democratic in flavor, have implemented some safeguards against this type of tyrany of the majority.

not sure those safeguards are working effectively in the US.

Not sure if I necessarily agree that the issue we face in the US has to do with "tyrany of the majority", but even if it does I would never claim that the system is perfect, hence the "try to mitigate this" part of the statement above.

They’re designed to provide some protection to the political minority. Seems to be working just fine from where I sit.

In this scenario, is it better to have one larger Bloc cripple the smaller one?

They are deemed unlawful when you force people to join, teachers freedom of speech was considered violated when they're forced to join but disagree with the demands of the union. Is it fair to be forced to join, your dissenting opinion ignored and pay people who work against your own interests?

HOAs are also democratic and owned by their members - yet I hear 10 people complaining about their HOA for every person I hear speaking out in support of them.

HOAs differ vastly in quality due to lack of regulation and a wide range of community challenges and needs. It would be good to get a broad survey of folks in HOAs instead of relying upon anecdata but the lack of regulations make reliable reporting on this surprisingly difficult.

I’ve known some folks with HOAs and I see an inverse correlation with HOA dues and satisfaction which is usually correlated with HOA responsibilities and enforcement. I know folks with a $50 / year HOA and the HOA I was in was about $400 / mo for a condo that was maybe $1800 / mo.

People rarely speak passionately about things they're reasonably happy with.

There are regular surveys that cover how many people are in unions and the overall perception of unions. The numbers back up the idea that unions are dying and people don't think highly of them.

There are also solid propaganda campaigns running against unions in the US. This makes the data quite difficult to interpret.

Really? The majority of Americans are pro-union and a solid majority sees their decline as a bad thing.

Huh, you're right about the popularity when asked in the abstract. It isn't at the old level of popularity, but support has risen quite a bit in the last few years and is back to a majority. That being said, popularity of a topic is often higher when you talk in the abstract - only 30% of people have 'quite a lot' or a 'great deal' of confidence in unions as an institution which is what I was remembering[1]. Also in that data - only ~40% of people want to see union influence grow.

Membership is definitely tanking.[2]

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/12751/labor-unions.aspx

[2] https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2019/union-membership-rate-10-p...

> Also in that data - only ~40% of people want to see union influence grow.

~40% want to see grow to ~30%, giving them ~57% share of people with an opinion.

The confidence stat is silly - I don't have a huge amount of confidence in unions either because of their obvious decline in the last few decades.

Don't really see how you can see the [1] poll and not think that there is clearly a fair bit of support for unions. [2] seems completely irrelevant to popular opinion, which is what we were discussing.

It's been declining for decades and over half a century. They didn't know how bad they were. Who supports unions in the US and what majority? Who said that?

The members are bribed and threatened more easily than in your typical election.