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There is a lot of assumption here that the free market wouldn’t have done a lot of the things as we got richer anyway. Unions always claim they did that but realistically free markets would have done the same thing.
Google isn’t unionized. I hear they have some great working conditions.
Datapoint of 1, but Texas has both unionized and non-Union electricians whose pay is negotiated separately. Union electricians make more during their apprenticeships and have stricter safety on the jobsite, non-union have an easier time going out on their own. I’ve heard Union electricians are better paid than non-union in rural areas but only at the level of hearsay. Union rules make it harder to negotiate a better work life balance but also prevent the worst excesses(which can be pretty bad).
So unions probably deserve some credit, but mostly at the margins.
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Sure, it's possible that working conditions would have gotten better anyway.
As to Google I think that's more to do with the nature of software engineering as a profession. There is not nearly as much potential for harm compared to someone working a mining job or with heavy machinery or similar.
Wasnt referring to harm. But all the other benefits those firms provide. When a country gets sufficiently rich employees get to expect things like fully stocked kitchens and fancy lunches as a part of their pay.
Isn't that significantly an artifact of tax structure? At 30% income+payroll tax, a dollar spent by your employer goes 43% farther than a dollar spent by you, and the strength of that effect increases with pay under a progressive income tax.
Something else that comes to mind is that there's a bunch of cultural baggage about home cooking, fast food, frozen dinners, frequency of eating out, etc., which employer-provided chefs could bypass. Hitting a drive-through every day after work likely feels declasse to upper-middle-class specialist employees unless they're autistic enough to unlock, "just the macros, ma'am" mindset, but they are not likely going home to a wife who learned how to shop and cook in home economics class. There are multiple companies built around literally catering to this neurosis.
Have any of those companies ever made a profit? Nobody I’ve ever known to use them has kept them after the free trial period expired. ‘Being able to launder VC money’ is a pretty low bar to clear in terms of finding a marketable niche.
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You say this is a country thing but I'm pretty sure Google is a pretty large outlier on this. I work for and we definitely don't have fully stocked kitchens and free fancy lunches.
The key is that when productivity goes up employers can asks for their productivity to be paid in better benefits. Google and firms like them having super productive employers can asks for all sorts of fancy work conditions. Similar when manual labor hit a productivity level they could asks for things like 8 hr work week or safer conditions.
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