"Being irreplaceable" is a pipe dream. If you've found yourself in an irreplaceable role in a company, you've got incompetent management. If all you have to offer is your skill and time, you can be replaced.
The point is that in negotiations, you are at a disadvantage solely because you are an individual. Your class states that employers expect to pay you between X dollars and Y dollars with some wiggle room.
As a class, your median wage should be higher given the productivity increases and profits yielded by the industry in the past 30 years.
If you excel, you still have a higher base from which to negotiate from.
> However, just because there is no extra industry in your area should not mean that the existing ones should be muscled by unions to make up the difference. And it is very un-realistic to expect that.
No one is muscled into anything. Employers freely choose to enter contracts with unions. The issue is that some employers do not want to make good on the stipulations they agreed to.
It's unrealistic to think that labor should remain divided to be conquered, as the tides in the past pushed for organized labor until it was neutered by legislation.
>I have still not heard a good argument in this entire discussion thread as to why that is evil (it is just assumed to be) and why more is not expected of the employee in the negotiation. It just seems very fashionable, right now, to think of companies as inherently evil.
Things that are negotiable on a individual level are left up to the employee to suss out of their employer. Bonuses, supplementary pay, extra time off are usually up to you to negotiate.
Items that are negotiable on a class level are left to unions. Base pay for employees, working conditions, employee benefits etc are not individually negotiable. No organization is going to bend over backwards for one employee at the bottom of the totem pole.
It takes a group of people (the corporation) to provide those basic niceties and it takes a group of people (the union) to advocate and use its weight in negotiation to ensure their members are provided with them.