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They were in many places proximal causes of course. I don't dispute what legislation was passed on behalf of which lobbies. My point is in the counterfactual world without unions we don't know that things wouldn't have shaken out the same or even better. It's not obvious to me that the stickiness of 40 hours a week being imposed by some laws is a good thing. I really don't think that if there were never unions we'd be working 11 hours a day 7 days a week right now.
I really don't think you can lay this down at the feet of capital like there wasn't, often left wing, ideological justification. The economic class lens can be useful and I don't totally reject it but you're just blind if you think this is primarily a capital vs labor interest thing.
Unions didn't have a choice outside of autarkic fantasies where we're all much poorer but at least we're wallowing in American made poverty. The advantage of being the only power not demolished by ww2 was always going to wear off.
It doesn't seem like it's worked out well for the capital involved either. But you're dodging here, EU members are undeniably more unionized and populist left influenced. Where is the prosperity for the european? Why are their nation arguably handling mass immigration even worse? This was voted for, was it false conciousness?
This is both not true and irrelevant. Any income tax paid by an employee is indistinguishable from a tax on the company for its labor costs. Most employers even withhold the taxes making it even more obvious what's going on.
Funny you would ask. restaurant and supermarket unions (e.g., UNITE HERE, UFCW, RWDSU) lobbied to keep the cap tight, arguing unregulated street vendors steal sales from unionized workers with benefits, pensions, and higher wages. In 2021 comments on expanding permits, union reps explicitly opposed increases, claiming it would "hurt workers" by shifting business to non-union carts. No evidence they directly set fees, but their influence helped maintain the scarcity driving those costs. Recent reforms (e.g., 2021 law adding 4,000 permits over 10 years) faced pushback from them.
They've been right repeatedly on rent control
Huh? The only mass immigration that can be described as "voted for" was the intra-EU one. Everything else was fait accompli, and parties who did want to oppose and reverse it are being suppressed by various means.
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