I think where it breaks down though is if a company manages to monopolize the market we all recognize this is bad. If a union tries to monopolize the labor supply to a company, most pro-union opinions celebrate this and argue the company should have to negotiate with the union to find a rate rather than being able to just shit-can everyone in the union and move on to the next guy.

Union itself I'd agree could function as basically a corporation of workers. That's not on face a bad thing, but the devil is in the details of what kind of violence (via law or otherwise) is used to try and use that to form a monopoly. Of course the companies are no better in this regard, they use the violence of the state to monopolize markets as well.

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wat10000 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Aren't exclusive contracts pretty common in business? There's a big difference between monopolizing the supply to a single customer, which happens all the time, and monopolizing an entire market.

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timfsu 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, but they expire in ways that unions don’t

	▲	wat10000 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Does anything prevent a company from negotiating a time-limited contract with a union, other than the company's ability to negotiate?

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mothballed 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes if it's just a voluntary contract I see nothing sinister. If some employees form a union that's not sinister. If the company signs a contract with them that's not sinister. But if some employees want a union and that automatically means they've forced the other employees to join rather than allowing the other employees to pick to work outside the union, or automatically means the company is involuntarily bound to contract, that would be a bit sinister.

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nielsbot an hour ago | parent | next [-]

unions don’t work unless everyone’s in them.

it’s a free country—individuals have freedom to just work at a non union shop.

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wat10000 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Involuntarily binding the company to the contract would be bad, I agree.

But what's wrong with forcing the other employees to join to keep their jobs? That is fundamentally a requirement on the company, that they only hire people in the union. And that's no different from any other sort of exclusive contract. If a restaurant has an exclusive contract with Coke, is it sinister to say that Pepsi employees can't supply them, and they have to join Coke if they want to do that?

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mothballed 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm saying suppose some employees decide to form a union. And the company doesn't consent to sign an exclusive contract. As I understand it there are unions advocating that workers that didn't agree to a union still have to be bound to it anyway.

It's my understanding in some states in the US it's possible a worker will be forced to join a union if a certain number of other workers want a union, even if neither the worker nor the company hiring them consent to it. In about half of states under "right to work" though they do give employees the option to not join the union if they don't want to.

This happened to me when I was working a ~minimum wage job at a grocery store. At the time it was not a right to work state, and I was forced to join the UFCW. The union I was forced to join then made me pay dues, pushing me below minimum wage.

	▲	nielsbot an hour ago \| parent [-]
		how much were your dues? and you were getting $7.25/hr?