There are unions in the nordic countries. They generally work quite well and don't hurt those countries competitiveness - those nations are quite competitive.

I believe Germany is also highly unionized.

So maybe we should learn from them ?

And BTW in all those countries one thing about those unions is that they are highly responsible - they understand the market realities and understand that people need to justify salries or else there would be layoffs.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-19/volkswagen... describes the tension of having a company with German-style union-values operate in the US.

no. hard working europeans leave europe to escape the system where they have little hope of bettering themselves in the european system. lots of them showed up in china working as part of outsource or manufacturing firms. talked to several myself.

In general, self-improving institutions operate by setting goals, evaluating those goals with metrics and iterating on the underlying model so as to improve those metrics. I know that's a simplistic answer, but I lack the specific understanding of how unions currently work to provide better insight.