You cannot have optional and union in the same sentence, that defeats the purpose of a union.

What you are saying is I want the union to do all the work without me being hands on on its function. Unions are useless if the workers just sit idle and wait for the representatives to do all the work.

Participation of all workers is what make a union powerful.

In Northern Europe we put optional and union in the same sentence, and it works well. But there is social pressure to join, and many places everyone, or almost everyone is union members. And maybe more importantly, the unions are usually big enough that they have power even if not everyone are members.

I don't see how the union was doing any worthwhile work for me back when I was making minimum wage at a grocery store. All I saw was that they wanted to skim hundreds of dollars off my meager paychecks every year.

You didn't understand what the benefits of collective action against a hostile employer are. That's the fault of the union for failing to explain what they do for members (unions are about much more than just wages). That doesn't mean there's no benefit though.

a union is not an unalloyed good for the employees. I also worked at a unionized grocery for about 3 months. At our shop, it was clear that the union was set up to protect the senior employees at the expense of the junior employees. There were about 10-ish people on the checkout stands during my shifts, 4 of them were employees who had been working there for 10+ years, and 6 of them were people who had been working there for less than a year. The senior employees worked maybe 15% of their shift when it was particularly busy, otherwise they'd have "meetings" in the break room or hang outside smoking. The junior employees were worked hard and burned out and left.

That has nothing to do with unions though, obviously. If you look at any organisation you tend to see people who have been there a long time without moving upwards or onwards are pretty lazy people who know how to play the system. They don't need a union for that.

A lot of people who are anti-unions appear to think the union is the cause of everything bad without noticing the same things happen everywhere else as well. Keeping shitty staff around is much more a function of employers who don't track how good their staff are than anything to do with unionization.

Also, forming an opinion about unions based on one job that lasted 3 months with 10 co-workers, the majority of who were hard-workers, is appalling. That isn't anywhere near enough information. You really need to try harder.

I'm sorry I didn't cover the industrial and labor relations courses I took in college in my 5 sentence long comment on an online posting board

Works for Boeing.

I see what you're saying but an "optional" union is pretty much bound to collapse inevitably.

But why shouldn't it? No, seriously. If union isn't providing enough value to justify overhead it creates - it's just a parasite and everyone will benefit once it's gone.

Boeing’s other union (SPEEA) is optional and has been for decades.

That’s only because there’s a union to begin with. If the option was union or no union that would be a story - is it possible to not be in the union at all and not pay dues?

Why would a union be company specific? It makes a lot of sense for a union to represent all workers doing e.g. car manufacturing.

This is how the NLRA has been set up unions in the US--generally to make unions weaker. Other countries have sectoral bargaining, which is what you describe

Why stop there? What if we even had a huge tent, available to workers from all around the world...

Yeah. We could hold elections for union reps amd call the dues "taxes" and the union "government".

A single-company union is generally a weak union, unless the company is gigantic. Expanding to other companies is how unions gain power to negotiate more effectively, the same way that companies gain price negotiation benefits by expanding into new markets.

>It left a bad taste in my mouth.

Buy better food? I don't understand how a person can eat their food and digest it in 30 minutes.

Nowadays when I work downtown I'll sometimes take a leisurely lunch that involves walking to a restaurant, ordering food, waiting for it, eating it, and then returning. That can take me up to an hour if things are really slow.

Back then I worked in the Safeway deli. I'd often make a sandwich for myself and set it aside, walk around the counter and buy it when lunch started, and then finish eating in 15-20 minutes. And then I'd be stuck sitting around in the break room with nothing to do waiting out the remaining 40 minutes.

Sure I usually read books or watched tv on a little Archos media player. But I would have rather finished work earlier and done that in the comfort of my home.

Depends on whether you want to have a long lunch in the middle of the day or get Done with the workday as quickly as possible.