> I'm not allowed to plug in an electrical strip at a trade show.

Perhaps because some sockets are one the same circuit and they don't want to overload that? (At best, risking a power outage because of a circuit breaker going off and at worse a fire if you happened to plug your electrical strip into another electrical strip)

> I'm not allowed to pick up an item sitting twenty feet away on the loading dock.

Perhaps because there may be active work or equipment moving around and you aren't wearing high viz and aren't communicating with someone operating heavy equipment?

These 2 things, though, aren't union related. 1 of them (the electrical strip) may not even be regulation related but rather simply that the organizer has had problems with this in the past. The why for these rules aren't exactly hard to imagine or understand.

> They make public transit too expensive

Public transit is expensive because we refuse to accept the notion of operating it at a loss. We are perfectly capable of partially or fully subsidizing public transit through taxes. In fact, we'd probably save money by running it completely off of taxes because we'd eliminate all the measures we take to ensure someone isn't riding for free. Someone hopping a ticket stand wouldn't jeopardize our ability to keep the trains running. We could further save the tax payers money by adding enough public transit to eliminate or severely reduce the need to purchase cars. Directly saving money on car mileage/purchases/insurance and indirectly saving money by the reduced climate impact and cleaner air (less lung cancer).

Some public services are worth taxes. We (usually) think that way about police, fireman, libraries, and public schools. Heck, we already think that way in terms of transport (most roads aren't built through usage fees).

That article doesn't assert that unions are to blame for prices increasing. In fact, the only reference to price increases are from an interview from someone getting off the train who agreed that the trains should staff a conductor, and implied that fares were increasing despite the staff cuts.

If anything that article supports the idea that unions protect people, and without them companies will push even more irresponsible decisions that put people at risk for the sake of profits.

I've done about a dozen trade shows and have done both of those things, from personal experience. (This anecdote comes up frequently in these discussions and I always wonder where from, because it's not anything like I've seen...)

Where does it come from? I saw it myself at the 1981 NCC in Chicago. The Xerox trade show staff person with a roll of $100 bills for paying off the unions.

Granted that was a while ago.

Yeah, I guess things might have been different then. I was 3 at that time, and in doing occasional trade shows for the last 7 or 8 years (so, from mid 2010s on), I've just never experienced it; not in Seattle, San Diego, Baltimore, nor a handful of smaller cities in NY and DE.

Maybe the world has changed in the last 42 years, and it'd be helpful to qualify stories like these (where the original poster says he is not allowed, present tense) with where and when they've happened.

Can't argue with that. OP definitely used present tense.

I worked in a government office where only unionized IT workers were allowed to move computer equipment. My boss gave me his old monitor after upgrading and I had to wait until after hours to move it. This was around 2018.

So the electrical strip thing seems plausible to me.

Not sure why you are getting down voted. Anyone who has tried to setup a tradeshow booth in Vegas, NYC, etc has run into this.

A little less restriction at tradeshows from union rules would be welcomed and convention centers would be smart to bargain with the union for it.

As for Silicon Valley the hatchet job at Twitter wouldn't have been so easy if the company had been unionized.

I really wish the TVC at Austin Google well in their efforts to unionize. When Pichai gets almost a 1/4 billion a year in compensation surely there is room to pay folks at the bottom better. It shouldn't take several years contracting at Google to get a 50 cent raise to $14. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-subcontractors-face-lo...

Yup, and the Inspector General for BART quit in disgust over rampant corruption and when she tried to investigate the union (among others) stonewalled like crazy.

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigation/bart-inspector-gene...

Unions can be great, but they can also abuse their power.