Despite all the propaganda, unions work. In this case they got better pay and benefits.

I'm pro the concept of unions. They get a bad rep for 3 reasons:

1) They overly protect legitimately poor employees. This poisons the perception of unions.

2) Certain unions have too much power and probably shouldn't exist. E.g. police unions can grind a city to a halt if they don't consistently get a raise. Some teacher unions span a whole state/province - this gives them outsized power. I support these unions and want to see teachers paid well, but there's gotta be some balance. Likewise for government unions.

3) They are not always cognizant that their demands might genuinely just lead to the company folding or going overseas. I've seen unions shut a facility down that never opened up again.

How to resolve?

1) Unions need to better balance their mandates and how they might extend to objectively not great union members.

2) We need an alternative to unions for government jobs. These workers need protections, but government jobs already afford a lot better protections than private sector in NA and shutting down a whole city or state over negotiating will always be an imbalance of power that then becomes an arms race (e.g. back to work legislation). I don't have an answer to this one, but I think it needs review.

3) I don't think this needs any intervention, but I think it's an insane thing to do.

	▲	9x39 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What do you think about representative vs direct unions? Representative unions' incentive seems to be gathering the biggest bloc of members to represent, with their dues and bargaining power focused into a few union bodies for maximum leverage. This seems to be virtually all unions in the US. Direct unions - perhaps more accurately works councils? - seem to exist out there, but more in EU - just from what I can read, not firsthand. The huge unions enjoy more dues but the common denominator definitionally has to be substantially lower than smaller works councils to get the membership counts. Big general unions benefit unions themselves, while smaller unions specific to a company or protecting a professional standard benefit the skilled or specialized workers. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much of a marketplace in the US around that choice.