You couldn't sack this person in the US for engaging in protected converted activity.

Perhaps on paper, but we shall see if large companies like Starbucks and Amazon face any substantive results for firing people for their union organizing activity.

No, you'd fire them for being late, not doing everything to the letter of company policy, or any one of a thousand other reasons that aren't protected. Good luck proving it later as well, unless for some reason you have money you want to burn on a lawsuit.

>The writer of this email says they left France because of "too high work protection," and that they would rather "invest in more liberal & open-minded countries where we can easily dismiss bad performers & trouble makers who kill their employers & the entire company."

>Basically, they're aiming for the equivalent of at-will employment in the US, where you can be dismissed for more or less any reason

Up to this point I thought that you were defending at-will employment :')

from the inside of various companies in France, unions only seem to protect free-loading employees (as longs as they were members of that union, ofc). Outside, I've seen union organize protests and strikes, some that seemed justified, some that were dubious or frankly BS. So I can relate with the desire to leave for a country where unions seem less like a drain on productivity.

That doesn't seem that damning of evidence against unions. The same unions that protect the 'free-loading employees' also protect all the other employees that are members of that union.

There are certainly problematic unions, but we should be equitable to the benefits that they provide.

By that logic, the First Amendment only seems to protect pornographers and racists.

It's goes both ways. There are psychopathic employers/managers and there are psychopathic employees and your average skaters. Skaters aren't always bad and they are part of society and you can't avoid them --but having key ones can rot an entire team.

Depends on your point of view. When you're starting a new company you can't afford to have some employee call in sick and having to pay them for an x amount of months/years. Your company would simply fail and you'd be bankrupted.

OTOH I do agree that unions are much needed in a capitalistic society where only the ones with rare sought-after skills reap the rewards and the bulk are fighting over scraps.

> This kind of toxic condescension by (some) bosses and ruling/employing classes, is exactly why workers need unions.

Tell that to all the New Yorkers who can't enjoy a modern, efficient transportation because expansion is just too expensive and slow. Or good law enforcement, for that matter, too. Plenty of good journalistic pieces digging deep into it and the conclusion is one: corrupted, power-tripping unions. Example: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

I am not against unions nor regulation, but they can drain the employer and stagnate growth very quickly. It doesn't have to automatically be greedy CEO's "toxic condescension", it can have merit.

If the Qatari construction workers had been unionized, the World Cup stadiums would have been even more expensive to build.

But 6000+ of them would still be alive.

The tradeoff you're condemning is literally people's lives for a few dollars of savings.

These are two extremities laid out, mine and yours. Finding a common ground does not have to be impossible.

There should be a rule like: if you work for a private company, you can have a union, but if you work for a government, you cannot have a union. Maybe adjust the details as necessary, but the idea is that there should be no police unions etc.

The reason is that when a union in a private company goes too far, that company can be replaced by a competitor. But if you cannot similarly replace a police force, nothing prevents a police union from going too far.

I got dismissed too, in the Netherlands. Way to easy.