Is there am American industry that is heavily unionized that is globally competitive? Education, policing, auto manufacturing, and steel come to mind for me as both heavily unionized and significantly poorer quality in America relative to comparable peers. Maybe the entertainment industry though? I'm genuinely curious
> Is there am American industry that is heavily unionized that is globally competitive?
Hollywood.
Everyone from the highest paid stars to the set-builders are union members - you literally cannot say a word on film if you're not union, and Hollywood is globally competitive in spite of (or because of?) this. The talent is still able to negotiate individually (a common, yet inaccurate aspersion thrown at unions is that someone will take over role of negotiations - but that's just for the baseline)
For contrast, the ancillary VFX industry is not unionized, and there are endless horror stories of exploitation there.
1. Many labor organizations do not consider police and prison guard unions to be legitimate labor unions, because police represent and enforce the interests of the ruling class not of the labor class and have historically been weaponized footsoldiers brought in specifically to brutalize organized labor movements. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-to-know-police-unions-l... has a moderately good exposition of the subject. If you don't like overt editorial politicization, skip the first paragraph.
2. I think you have to clarify what you mean by "competitive". If you start from the premise that no advancement or profit is worth stepping on the necks of people with less power, then the only metric that makes sense for evaluating organized labor is fair treatment of the laborers. You will _of_course_ get more coal out of the ground faster and cheaper if, for instance, you use slaves or have zero rules protecting the health and safety of the miners. But you get that exactly by abusing the health and safety of the miners. So does one value cheap coal or not killing people? If one values only price above all else, then of course treating laborers well comes at a cost. I don't think we have a general sense that Chinese labor is treated well despite being an economic powerhouse because everything from there is cheaper and we just _really_ love to externalize costs. Also, don't we regularly have scandals where steel from China fails to meet some quality standard and causes bridges and buildings to collapse? Is it competitive to produce something dangerous for less money? If less up-front cost is the primary goal, then yes. Should that be the goal?
But better job in what way? Better job at treating workers fairly? Better job at cutting cost at the expense of worker treatment? "Better" is not universal.
I'd argue autoworkers and steel workers in America probably die less than their more productive and globally competitive peers in countries like China.
Most large newspapers in the US are unionized. Like the NY Times (https://www.nyguild.org/) and the Washington Post (https://postguild.org/) for example. News orgs are obviously facing difficult times but many journalists are in unions.
American Medical Association and various state medical boards, various legal bars, AICPA, CFA Institute, various academic accreditation institutes form a kind of network that even accredits colleges that still practice alumni preference (almost all of them)--a sort of union seniority rule that extends beyond into familial offspring.
Most upper-middle class stuff is heavily protected by union like organizations, many of which restrict membership count and lobby against immigration in their field based on maintaining salary levels and their standards of living.
It's questionable whether or not America's healthcare system would be considered "globally competitive" though. We do have top-tier medical research but there's a lot of waste too
