Unions negotiate for better wages, stable hours, and benefits. Often those benefits include tuition reimbursement, but the other things are just as important for establishing a predictable career path so that factory work can be a step to something else, if you so wish it to be.
Unions do nothing to contribute to productivity (in the broader economic sense). If anything, they are a hindrance to it.
I would rather see a focus on a "union" we already have on the scale of entire states or the entire country called the legislative process. Through it we can argue for basics like guaranteed livable income (so you have the time to better yourself), universal healthcare (so you're not always one accident or sickness from being destitute) and a high quality educational system. A livable income, healthcare and education are the foundation upon which most other opportunities rest.
Yes, by doing things like get us the 8 hour working day (parts of what is not the AFL-CIO were the largest driver for that, taking decades, and having members die in the process, and leaving us with May 1st as the international day for labour demonstrations as another direct result).
Productivity is not a measure of the success of a society.
To clarify. I never said they never contributed to productivity. At one time they did, but these days they have largely succumbed to the shirky principle:
“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” — Clay Shirky
The same can be said of the organizations that have typically opposed the unions too. The world has too many zombie organizations that have outlived their usefulness and are now a drag. The effort being spent on unions would be better off spent on increasing support for a guaranteed minimum wage. We've now got universal healthcare (or at least some flavor of it), but there are a lot more ways we can improve equality of opportunity and fairness and I don't see how the modern unions contribute in any way to the bigger picture (like the 8 hour workday)
Productivity is what allows more and more of us to pursue activities that make us happy for more hours of the day.
by doing things like get us the 8 hour working day
How do you figure? To me it seems that most of the union jobs were simply automated away, moved to third world countries, or heavily supplemented with illegal immigrant labour. None of those arrangements maintain an 8 hour working day limit.
The remaining positions are generally high-skill or based on independent contractors. No wonder they command higher wages and have better working conditions.
Unions rode the tide of technology and globalization but didn't actually cause it.
Although there were initial successes in achieving an eight-hour day in New Zealand and by the Australian labour movement for skilled workers in the 1840s and 1850s, most employed people had to wait to the early and mid twentieth century for the condition to be widely achieved through the industrialized world through legislative action. [And many other countries followed the same trajectory.]
How come? I'll take a guess: because it was only made possible in practice in the 20th century by a sufficient increase in productivity, mainly through automation but also economies of scale. And as the process continued, those jobs went away completely.
>How? Does a union provide a path from the factory floor to being an engineer without needing a degree, or... what?
They tell the management that the current situation is really dumb and won't fly, and they have the power to back it up. A union should ideally work for the self-interest of the workers and fight for a larger piece of the pie that is the company, but also try to make the pie bigger.
I've worked in such a situation. You could make your own coffee (could cost someone their job, you see). You couldn't park your foreign car at the plant (later acquired by Daimler).
We were in the engineering building offsite and there were union guys working there too. I enjoyed working with everybody there, despite the bit of wackiness around the corner.
How? Does a union provide a path from the factory floor to being an engineer without needing a degree, or... what?
I honestly don't see how unions would even be relevant here.