This depends heavily on the industry.

If you're a stellar technician specialised in fixing stuff in the only employer in the only industry in town, sure, the company knows you need that job even more than they need you and so you're poorly paid just like all the other technicians. If you're a stellar software developer and your bosses know it, not so much. You can, individually, take your 10x-more-productive skillset to loads of other high paying companies, and that gives you a much better individual negotiating position than "everyone deserves a raise", especially since your colleagues won't go on strike to help you get a new top salary band at a large multiple of what they're earning even if you really deserve it.

This is true whether not not the company you work at is unionized. Ultimately what you appear to be saying that the union is valuable since you'll get paid more until you leave.

No, I'm saying that if you are an above average employee in $role an industry where there is already competitive pressure to offer good wages, a union fixing your wage at the level it is able to negotiate for the average employee in $role will mean you earn less. Until you leave, obviously.

Companies, generally speaking, already have guidelines around what wages they will pay.

So to get significantly better pay you need to leave anyway (how often do you get counteroffers that meet or exceed the competitors offer). Blaming a union for the thing the company already does seems odd.

Companies have guidelines. Wage bargaining arrangements negotiated between companies and unions have binding guarantees. One is obviously easier for a company to ignore if it's in their interests to incentivise a staff member than another.

Also, company wage setting guidelines are more likely to prioritise "retain and reward the staff we think are best" in the first place. (Obviously unions prioritising things like reducing wage inequality or rewarding the union leaders' core constituency are good for other people's wages instead.) Seems far odder to insist that as companies have some sort of guidelines, unions can take credit for but accept no blame for any of the changes they negotiate whilst formalising them.

> unions can take credit for but accept no blame for any of the changes they negotiate whilst formalising them.

Good thing no one said that then!

> One is obviously easier for a company to ignore if it's in their interests to incentivise a staff member than another.

But in this situation, the offer you're getting is going to be no better than what the other company offers, so if your current company can't match, you don't lose anything.

> But in this situation, the offer you're getting is going to be no better than what the other company offers, so if your current company can't match, you don't lose anything

What a strange comment?! Perceived high achievers and high potential talents receive well above company average salaries or salary rises all the time in competitive industries like software, without waiting to see whether that person starts interviewing at other companies and what that offer is! They can't receive well above company average pay offers if the company's collective bargaining arrangement doesn't allow them to offer anything other than the standard union-agreed pay rate even the below average workers get. So they earn less.

If a company is willing to pay a person more than they're willing to pay their average and below average staff, but a union rule forces them to pay everyone with that job description the same, that person is obviously earning less money, not more money. I'm genuinely amazed a concept so simple can generate so many objections

> but a union rule forces them to pay everyone with that job description the same

Why would we advocate for this though? You keep making the claim that unions would advocate for more and more restrictive policies.

First it was guidelines, now it's strictly regimented salaries with no room for performance based pay at all.

You're generating objections because you keep changing your argument. Yes, paying everyone exactly the same is probably not a good idea. But no one is advocating for this, so who cares?

I mean, literally the entire point of collective bargaining arrangements is that instead of negotiating salaries individually, the firm agrees to pay everyone a wage schedule agreed with the union. Hence the whole subthread starting with another poster talking about collectively negotiated pay bands for all staff having less scope for large pay rises than a firm's discretionary policy, as the union also has to look after the interests of lower performing workers who want to be paid the same or nearly the same as their colleagues. A collective bargaining agreement is by definition a more restrictive wage policy than an individually negotiated one.

It is not me "changing my argument" that you have spent several posts sniping at my arguments without apparently having the slightest idea what collective bargaining is.

There are plenty of unions (some examples up thread) that do variable pay. If you're arguing against a specific kind of collective bargaining agreement, then just say that, and be aware that it's a far more oblique criticism of unions, especially in this specific context of Google.

Also, a salary agreement between a single individual employee and a huge corporation has by definition a huge power imbalance. Unions reduce that power imbalance. You can argue which is best (full negotiation freedom with massive power imbalance vs. collective bargaining with or without variable/performance pay and a much smaller but still non-trivial power imbalance), but there's no point in just arguing for one skew and ignoring the legitimate arguments for the other.

As I said in my original post, the power imbalance depends hugely on how marketable a person's skills are. A company being much bigger and richer than an individual isn't a weakness of that individual's negotiating position if the company really needs that developer and that developer doesn't need that job and both parties know it, it's a strength. There are people that Google would find incredibly difficult to replace, and few of them would find it more difficult to find other well paid jobs. A third party which is less interested than both original parties in prioritising the interests of the highest performers over workers 1/10 as productive is almost certain not to negotiate as effectively on the highest performers' behalf, whether the agreement involves a range or a fixed wage. Collective bargaining makes workers considered individually dispensable by the company indispensable by threatening to collectively withdraw labour. That doesn't help those who are already indispensable and know about it, and typical collective bargaining goals (reduce pay inequality, increase transparency, reduce or eliminate scope for individual wage negotiation, increase the amount the company spends on less productive employees) actively hinder them in getting the pay rises they could ask for.

As I pointed out a very obvious situation in which power imbalances ensure even the best performers would benefit from collective wage bargaining from the very beginning, I'm pretty confident I am not the person in this subthread arguing for just one skew. But I am equally adamant that there are people Google considers [near] indispensable, and most of them are plenty employable enough for wage bargaining to be skewed in their favour, an imbalance not improved by people who want others to see pay rises first taking over negotiations.

A wage schedule that increases minimum salary by x% is more restrictive, but benefits everyone and hurts no one.

Your "by definition" is incorrect. There's no law that requires a collective bargaining agreement to enforce pay maximums (or in fact anything about pay at all!). So please don't tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about.