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I've often heard that the biggest problem with unions isn't higher salary and benefit demands but inflexibility. Unions often insist on things like work rules (who gets to do what) and are resistant to automation or other forms of efficiency improvement. They basically end up mandating that things never change, eventually killing the host.

From what I know of union work rules I can't even imaging trying to run any form of high-tech manufacturing enterprise under those conditions. You just couldn't do anything. That kind of bureaucracy and restriction is death to any kind of innovation.

I've heard that unions in some other countries like Germany and Japan are different. I'd be curious to hear a German take on it.

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Germany's economy seems to be humming, and while it has some industrial giants like Siemens the bulk of its economic energy comes from the mittelstand, quality manufacturing firms with 500 or fewer employees. Worker's councils are the norm in German industry and have a collegial rather than adversarial relationship with employers.

It's not hard to find more information about this. You might also find it instructive to consider the much narrower earning discrepancies between line and executive workers in other countries compared to the US, even after you filter out the more sensationalist comparisons and allow for the fact of the larger domestic market.

> and have a collegial rather than adversarial relationship with employers.

That's basically what I've heard.

I'd like to see a US company intentionally try to form a union among its employees along the German model. That'd be an interesting experiment. I could see this working in a high skill area where ability to attract and retain top talent is a major differentiator.

Union rules change all the time. Management just isn't usually willing to offer sufficient incentive during negotiations, since that would eat in to their profits.

Ultimately I think this comes down to the paradox of thrift.

You want everything as cheap as possible, which means you want everyone else to not belong to a union. But you want to be paid as much as possible, so you want to belong to a union. Your economic self-interest would be maximized if you were the only unionized person on Earth... but of course that's impossible.

It's not just "corporate greed." I mean that definitely exists and many executives are over-compensated, but compared to other costs like capital, labor, and taxes, that's usually just not that big of a cost center for a large company. That's part of how they get away with it. If CXOs were a significant cost center the shareholders would be less tolerant of those fat compensation packages.

Everyone wants everything cheap.

A popular assertion, but one which ignores the demonstrable willingness of people to pay more at places like farmer's markets or shop at stores that don't always offer the lowest prices or widest selection. Since many people willingly make sacrifices on either price or convenience, you're arguing from a flawed premise.

Alternately, it is a good assertion but the interpretation of cheap is wrong.

Cheap should be defined in a way that is inclusive of all the costs, both monetary and non-monetary societal costs. Then I think everyone does want everything cheap - this is just a statement that nobody likes waste.

But it's just word games. It would be better if we did away with these pernicious generalizations.

Nah, I'd be willing to pay more if it meant my fellow workers were all provided with the protections a union. There's more to life than just money.

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