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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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Anyone have any examples of an employee union that improves business for both employees and employer?

The most salient feature of unions that I know about is that they prevent the employer from firing bad employees, or promoting good employees over ones with seniority. This makes sense to me because unions get their power/support from employees that need the union more than the employer needs them i.e. bad ones. A prototypical example of the leftist high-low alliance.

But there's no reason it has to be this way. It's technically possible for a union to say "fire bad employees, promote some faster than others, but pay us more". Is there any examples of this sort of thing working well?

I don't have an example of a union doing that, but there are examples of what unions should be doing good things.

Unions only exist because there are laws that force employers to negotiate with them. Absent those laws, a coalition of workers looks a lot more like a temp agency or a contracting shop. I have had good experiences working for such agencies: they find jobs, they test your skills once and then vouch for you with employers so you don't have to re-interview all the time, they negotiate with the employer on your behalf, etc. The difference is that the employer is not forced to hire only employees from that agency, so the agency is kept honest. There are obviously benefits to the employer to such an arrangement because it's totally voluntary and they still choose it over direct hiring.

Unions only exist because there are laws that force employers to negotiate with them.

100% true, just like DEI only exists because of the civil rights act.