We have a union for IT workers (including developers) at my workplace. I was only recently allowed to leave it as a result of becoming a supervisor.
In my opinion, the union was manipulative and not beneficial to employee outcomes. They were first and foremost politicians who used union funds to support various unrelated political objectives and didn't really offer any substantive help or improvement with salary/benefits.
After I left (completely in accordance with procedure and my position), the union sent me a threatening letter demanding that I continue sending them dues.
As a very "left leaning" person politically, I'm totally pro-labor, but unions often only pay lip service to the employees they are supposed to benefit.
>We have a union for IT workers (including developers) at my workplace. I was only recently allowed to leave it as a result of becoming a supervisor.
If you exit the union but still work at the company you're free riding on the higher benefits and wages negotiated by the union your coworkers paid for.
If you really don't like unions that much you can leave and go work for a company that isn't unionized. It isn't like there's a shortage of them.
This is an incredibly arrogant argument for a union to be making. If a union gains membership by forcing employees to be union members, its claim to be legitimately representing employees becomes very weak, IMO.
Closed shop tactics are ways for unions to gain power, often at the expense of labour. Also, once its place a union doesn't need to do much to win members. The incentives are all wrong. These things collapsed all over the world for a reason.
The cheek of believing they "own" these benefits and should be payed by anyone who wants this job.
I don't think there's any question that a union that lives up to the ideals of the labor movement - solidarity, equality, power for working people over their own lives - has to persuade people that membership is worth it, not coerce them. You're right that there's a connection between the collapse of unions and their bureaucratization and loss of the ability to persuade workers that membership is worth not just paying for, but fighting for.
But free riding is a real problem. If people can gain the benefits of union protection while avoiding the costs and risks of union membership, that temptation will be enormous. And if you believe workers deserve control over their own lives, including their workplace lives, some of that control has to be collective and democratic, not just individual. In a workplace and a society, decisions that affect everybody collectively and override individuals will get made. The alternative to democracy making those decisions isn't that everybody has infinite liberty, it's that the boss makes those decisions.
I agree to an extent, however this is where is comes back to arrogance vs humility. A union believing itself to be the only indispensable guardian of worker from abuse to the extent that they feel comfortable running a closed shop (these things are not historically rare) means you end up with two bosses. You're no less a slave to a system.
In any case, the democracy argument is tricky. Democracy might have voting, but it is not voting.
Even calling this free riding rubs me the wrong way. It implies they are claiming ownership over something that I don't think they own.
Planting you flag, demanding compliance, excluding... Whether or not you vote I don't like it, I don't think it's power to the working person. I might hold my nose and pay the fees, I might also laugh at my boss's jokes or agree that unpaid overtime. None of those things are empowering though.
>This is an incredibly arrogant argument for a union to be making. If a union gains membership by forcing employees to be union members
Workers vote to decide on whether to unionize. If you don't like the outcome of the vote, you can quit and go work for a non-union company.
>its claim to be legitimately representing employees becomes very weak, IMO.
You must hate democracy.
>Closed shop tactics are ways for unions to gain power, often at the expense of labour
No, closed shop tactics are a way for unions to gain power so that they can better represent labor. It prevents management from using divide and conquer against the workforce (their primary strategy).
>These things collapsed all over the world for a reason.
Because there has been a vicious campaign against them for decades. This is why wages are stagnant and profits are skyrocketing and the 0.01% own all the wealth.
Arrogance, again. Lack of unions is NOT the reason for the 1% - its banking/investment regulation. What we do at the grass-roots level has become profoundly irrelevant to those in positions of power.
And there's a word for that union 'democracy' you are so proud of - its called tyranny of the majority. Its using the trappings of democracy to hijack everybody's decisions about work.
Do you think there is no relationship between the state of regulation of banking (which I'd argue is less central to the policy story than tax rates but that's a side note) and the state of organized working-class power? How do you think those regulations get made?
In my opinion, the union was manipulative and not beneficial to employee outcomes. They were first and foremost politicians who used union funds to support various unrelated political objectives and didn't really offer any substantive help or improvement with salary/benefits.
After I left (completely in accordance with procedure and my position), the union sent me a threatening letter demanding that I continue sending them dues.
As a very "left leaning" person politically, I'm totally pro-labor, but unions often only pay lip service to the employees they are supposed to benefit.