The business has customers and pays me a salary. The union is simply a parasite, extracting value from the organization.
Objectively, if you voluntarily join a union shop, there's nothing wrong with that. I would never do it, but it's at least a free market transaction.
But it's unconscionable that a union might show up at my work and demand I start paying them for the "benefit" of negotiating on my behalf. I would instantly quit. Thankfully the Alphabet union is a tiny farce.
Why is the union a parasite, but not the company’s shareholders? In both cases employees are forced to send them revenue. So why is one good but the other bad?
I wouldn't consider shareholders good or bad, but neutral. The revenue you send them today is compensation for the capital they provided to get the business to where it is today (or, in many cases, liquidity for earlier employees who built the company). They provided meaningful value to secure that revenue stream.
Meanwhile, the union provides no value to the business.
It does provide value to the business, but to the employees rather than the shareholders. The question is why should interactions with the shareholder reps be compulsory, but not the employee reps? Why is compulsion fine for one but not the other?
> It does provide value to the business, but to the employees rather than the shareholders.
At best, unions provide a redistributive function (transferring income from high-performing to low-performing employees). In practice, their net benefit to employees is negative.
> The question is why should interactions with the shareholder reps be compulsory, but not the employee reps? Why is compulsion fine for one but not the other?
The shareholders own the company. They bought it from the original founders and employees who built it. Without shareholders, there would be no company.
Unions are just mafia bosses who showed up later demanding to be paid. They were never involved in value creation.
Without the employees, there would also be no company. You cannot work at the company without being forced to generate money for shareholders. You also cannot at the company without generating money for the union (if membership is compulsory). Once again, why is one bad and the other one good? Why is one a “mafia boss” and the other legitimate? It’s identical compulsion either way.
> Without the employees, there would also be no company.
This is incorrect. A company is more than the employees. See holding companies or any of the many companies that have gone through mass layoffs/restructuring.
> You cannot work at the company without being forced to generate money for shareholders.
I’m not forced, the whole point of wanting to work for a company is to enter into a mutually beneficial agreement where you make them money and get money in return.
> You also cannot at the company without generating money for the union
This is a third party that has no business interfering with the agreement I’m trying to enter into with a company to sell it my labor.
> It’s identical compulsion either way.
I don’t think you know what “compulsion” means. One of the things is voluntary, one is not.
Objectively, if you voluntarily join a union shop, there's nothing wrong with that. I would never do it, but it's at least a free market transaction.
But it's unconscionable that a union might show up at my work and demand I start paying them for the "benefit" of negotiating on my behalf. I would instantly quit. Thankfully the Alphabet union is a tiny farce.