I am very pro-union, but I feel like a part of situation you are describing is because we needs businesses. We don’t necessarily need unions. Without unions, businesses would still be here. Without businesses, where would the unions be?
Edit: I would like to reiterate that I am pro-union. I am just saying that unions are optional, but businesses (or the government as some have pointed out) are more necessary from the standpoint you don’t usually form a union and then start a business. I like unions, but they are technically optional and I think that fact is what leads to people being more critical of them. When businesses/government sucks, there’s kind of a “well that’s how it is I guess.” When a union sucks, there’s a “why even do this then?”
Yeah, I think talking about the benefits of "unions" in the abstract is a little weird because - at least in the US - unions are highly regulated by laws that were written primarily envisioning the model of early-20th-century manual labor. That is to say, unions were designed in a way that fit not just for-profit businesses but very particular types of for-profit businesses.
So you need to separate the more conceptual parts of unions - that maybe we should value sustainable and secure employment over shareholder value, that laborers should be able to negotiate collectively and not individually, that you can do good work that is beneficial to the public by prioritizing happy laborers - from the very specific implementation of unions that we happen to have. Without our current model of for-profit businesses, the implementation of unions would not be a coherent concept (and admittedly they are a bit less coherent now and when applied to e.g. tech companies than they were in the past for the businesses for which they were designed - which isn't to say they're the wrong answer, just that they're an awkward fit). But the values are still valid.
As a sibling comment said, worker-owned cooperatives are one model here. Another similar option is very small companies: the concept of a solo founder unionizing makes no sense, but the solo founder of a bootstrapped "lifestyle business" has most of the benefits one generally wants from unions, and communities of such businesses can choose to federate for a better voice in the market. There are certainly a lot of other options besides the idea of a large business owned by its founders or publicly traded.
But really developers would be better off with something along the lines of a trade guild. Something that enforces standards on employers and employees.
The Saturn corporation had a labor-management partnership which did exactly that for standards, and was a subdivision of GM. Unfortunately it's stressful for corp and union leadership when high standards are set, so it eventually lost support despite high worker approval.
I'd argue that if you hop into other threads about how everyone is worried about financial/societal collapse in the US that it is the end result of decimating unions in the 80s.
You just don't notice right away that you need unions when you lose them, corrosively much later you notice that society has gone off the rails.
I think that has much more to do with legislation in the US (not from there). Unions make sense for professions with a large amount of workers with very similar conditions. This is what brings members together and especially low wage workers have not much room to bargain. Tech paints a completely different picture.
Support and call center staff? Certainly can use a union. Developers? Far too diverse conditions.
I guess we dont necessarily need child labor laws or the weekend...
Remember when the cacophony of calls to "End the Olympics Now" when the IOC was found to be grossly corrupt? No, me neither. The investor owned media called for reform. As it will for literally any other institution.
I feel like the first line is kind of a little hyperbolic. I know that unions gave us a lot of the luxuries we take for granted today and I will state once again, for the record, that I am pro-union. I’m just saying that they are in a position where it is easy to criticize and reject them if they do something wrong. For better and for worse.
Do we need child labor laws? In countries that are reach enough to have various forms of social security there is no need to send little Timmy to work in a coal mine. In countries that aren't - they do help their parents with sustenance farming and those laws, even if they exist on some level, don't change anything.
A lot of people don't know just how corrupt the IOC is, I suspect if this was common knowledge there would be a hugely increased number of people calling for boycotts of the Olympics.
And those police unions are exactly why in many cases, an officer gets to see ALL evidence and video about a situation, with a required rep or lawyer, before making an official statement in many jurisdictions. Something you and I certainly don't get. In fact, they often try to trick suspects.
I mean, police unions do exist solely to protect police officers which means their incentives are sometimes opposed to the public they serve, and so they should absolutely not be in charge of things like self investigations and time-limiting records of abuse, etc.
But that's not inherent to a union. Cities shouldn't cede these extraordinary powers to the union in the first place, and if they already have, they should take them back.
Edit: I would like to reiterate that I am pro-union. I am just saying that unions are optional, but businesses (or the government as some have pointed out) are more necessary from the standpoint you don’t usually form a union and then start a business. I like unions, but they are technically optional and I think that fact is what leads to people being more critical of them. When businesses/government sucks, there’s kind of a “well that’s how it is I guess.” When a union sucks, there’s a “why even do this then?”