> The union pitch to businesses should be "you'll get more cost-effective results if you hire our union guys."
This approach makes no sense.
The role of a union is to defend the interests of their members in particular and workers in general. This means that the job of an union also includes opposing management decisions that go against the best interests of the company's workers.
An union only has any semblance of value if it oposes management practices that hurt workers, such as laying off a significant portion of a company's staff when the company is not in financial risk.
Your pitch idea is utterly absurd because you can't convince a manager that eliminating 15% of the company's salary costs is a bad idea even if the alternative is keeping around workers that might not be needed in the immediate future.
The only way to avoid these whimsical lay-offs is if an union opposes these initiatives in a way that the corporation has more to lose if he pushes them ahead.
> The role of a union is to defend the interests of their members in particular and workers in general.
Sure, but going about it by antagonizing their customers is not productive.
Implicit in your argument is the idea that workers have nothing to offer in exchange. I don't believe that's true. Businesses are always offering more money and perqs to get better workers. Unions can endear themselves to business by offering things in exchange for what they want, and by being partners in the success of the business.
Being enemies is a doomed endeavor, and likely why unions have declined over the years, unless they got special government rules to keep them in place.
This approach makes no sense.
The role of a union is to defend the interests of their members in particular and workers in general. This means that the job of an union also includes opposing management decisions that go against the best interests of the company's workers.
An union only has any semblance of value if it oposes management practices that hurt workers, such as laying off a significant portion of a company's staff when the company is not in financial risk.
Your pitch idea is utterly absurd because you can't convince a manager that eliminating 15% of the company's salary costs is a bad idea even if the alternative is keeping around workers that might not be needed in the immediate future.
The only way to avoid these whimsical lay-offs is if an union opposes these initiatives in a way that the corporation has more to lose if he pushes them ahead.