> I fully believe labor needs as much leverage against capital as possible for the scales to be balanced at all

Competition is required, rather than unionization. If an industry is dominated by monopolies, not only do customers suffer, workers do too. Unions don't really fix the problem - only make certain groups win over others.

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Muromec 2 hours ago | parent [-]

For once, the union is one of the rare in-groups that are very easy to join and actually benefit their members

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BobaFloutist 21 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

>that are very easy to join

That's the case for most service-sector unions, but a lot (certainly not all) of builder's unions seem to meter the amount of people that are allowed to join, making it prohibitively difficult to actually get into the union.

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missedthecue 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The problem is that they tend to benefit their members in a zero sum way. For example the LIRR wants a double digit raise not in exchange for hitting targets on on-time arrivals or some other metric. They want it or they strike and hold the community hostage. It bothers me that there's no value exchange it's just take take take, and ultimately at my expense.

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	▲	AnimalMuppet an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Worse, public sector unions are ultimately at my expense in a way that I can't even fix by not buying the product, since they're taking it from my taxes.