Look at Detroit in the 1950s (highest median income in the US) and look at it today (a ghost town), to see the long term effects of unionization on industry.
The reason the US software industry has been getting stronger and producing ever greater numbers of high paying jobs is that it enjoys the efficiencies of a free market in labor, aka it's not dominated by monopolizing unions.
The impact of the gas crisis, a preference for foreign imports, and the continued (real or percieved) lower quality of American-made vehicles might act as several intervening factors for the fall of Detroit; moreover, while all unions intervene on behalf of their employees, not all enforce wage ceilings.
The Screen Actors Guild is a counterexample for both points - Hollywood continues to be world-leading, and top actors continued to be paid well, while even the actor you've heard the least of has a minimum wage, down to rules around how many times they can be called-back for an audition.
The free market relies on free association, equal footing, and complete information for both parties. For most people, the business has a significant power advantage. Moreover, management is organizing together in order to depress wages through non-poach agreements - why shouldn't the workers work together as well?
Hollywood is a counterexample, I'll grant you that, but I'd argue it's only because the nature of film making - with many short-lived independent productions - doesn't give unionized work units the monopoly control they would have in large stable production facilities, like factories, and moreover, due to being cultural work, is very difficult to outsource.
Numerous industries in both the private and public sector have declined since being unionized.
Germany seems to have strong unions and a strong auto industry, but the German economy as a whole has suffered decades of wage stagnation. One outperforming industry alone doesn't negate the broader correlation between restrictive labor laws, and degraded economic performance.
>>The free market relies on free association, equal footing, and complete information for both parties.
A free market merely means anyone is free to offer their products/services, and everyone is free to take the best offer on the market.
There are plenty of market failures and government-imposed market distortions, but the idea that locking the market down with one-size-fits-all labor relation rules is going to mitigate the harm of these distortions is unbelievable. It's just going to make industry less effective, and in the long run, less beneficial to its workers.
Our society is too polarized and our history with unions too negative for reform to be possible. The Supreme Court, for example, was excoriated for the Janus decision--holding that compulsory membership in public sector unions violates the Constitution. But that's the German rule for all unions.
In America, the principle of "exclusive representation" applies to all labor unions.
If employees in department X at firm Y wish to unionize, they elect one democratically. This often involves affiliating themselves with an established union (choosing the affiliate is part of the formation/election process). If a majority of employees in department X vote for unionization, a contract between all employees in department X and management is negotiated. This newly elected union is now considered the exclusive representative of all employees covered by the agreement (i.e. in the bargaining unit). This has the following key implications:
1) No other unions may be formed within this department, and all negotiations between management and covered employees must go through the union.
2) The union has a legal obligation to fully represent each one of the employees in department X fairly and equally. In the states that allow it, this means that even if an employee in department X is not a member of the union, the union still must represent and negotiate on behalf of them as if they were a dues-paying active member. Employees who feel they are not being represented can sue their union for inadequate representation (in the same way that you can sue an incompetent lawyer).
(Point #2 is designed to balance out the problems that could come with just point #1.)
I go into all of this to contrast our system with Germany's system, where no exclusive representation exists. Some employees in a department may be represented by union X, others by union Y, some may be non-union. The company that employs them will have to negotiate three different contracts to keep this theoretical department running.
This system has its upsides: German unions never have to negotiate on behalf of non-members. It can also get extremely complicated. A large company may have to juggle many contracts just for one type of employee. The union that represents some arbitrary group of employees might change from year to year. These are just a few things that American companies don't have to deal with.
Maybe this is the system we have to move to in America post-Janus? I don't know, but it's worth remembering that exclusive representation was designed as a convenience to management in simplifying negotiations; I don't think our corporate leaders would prefer it at all.
> 2) The union has a legal obligation to fully represent each one of the employees in department X fairly and equally.
Sure, but what do you see as the difference in representation from person to person? Something that's beneficial to one worker (better conditions, more pay, etc) is almost always beneficial to their coworkers, too. Isn't negotiating a contract to the benefit of any of the workers pretty much automatically to the benefit of all of them?
> Employees who feel they are not being represented can sue their union for inadequate representation
This sounds like one of those facts which is technically true but practically useless. I googled it and found a number of answers that all say essentially: the courts recognize that unions have finite resources, and grant them leeway in choosing what to pursue. You probably will never win a case against your union, even for just being bad at what they do, unless they specifically discriminated against you on the basis of a protected class.
I've never heard of it happening, and I can't find any cases on the internet, either.
> This system has its upsides: German unions never have to negotiate on behalf of non-members.
What does this mean in practice? "We'd like better working conditions, but only for the names on this list"?
Note that there is, contrary to this description, no requirement for union lines to be drawn on internal organizational (“department”) lines, instead, they are generally drawn on job-role lines.
Yes, this is an oversimplification. I used department to avoid getting into the legal definition of a bargaining unit, which is extremely situational and tricky to define. In my example, assume everyone in department X does more or less the same thing :)
From what I know German unions are much bigger. IG Metall covers a lot of industry like car manufacturers, Siemens is in it, Stihl chainsaws, Bosch and a lot of other companies.
There are laws that mandate that from a certain size on employees have voting rights in management boards.
In general the relationship between employees and employers is a little more cooperative compare to the US.
> In Germany, compulsory union membership and "union shops" are illegal.
Any my understanding is that in Germany, unions have much more direct influence over company decision-making than American unions. IANAL, but I've heard German-style unions would be illegal in the US.
One key difference is that American-style is much more adversarial (each side trying to screw the other) where the German unions appear[1] to be more of a partnership than we managed to pull off.
[1] I say appear because I've only been (somewhat) involved with American-style (mostly from the management side)
They really are more cooperative. In LA there all the stories where the union prevents people from changing a lightbulb on a movie set if not done by someone in the union. This would never happen in Germany.
The reason the US software industry has been getting stronger and producing ever greater numbers of high paying jobs is that it enjoys the efficiencies of a free market in labor, aka it's not dominated by monopolizing unions.