All effective unions are mandatory. They represent the interests of the mass of workers there, and they wield that collective power against two groups who would be happy to take food out of their mouths if they could get away with it: their employer and new employees who need a job enough that they are willing to work for less money or worse conditions.
So if you want to join a company and enjoy the benefits that a union has fought for without contributing to their continued push for better conditions, you are a parasite and their enemy, and they are justified in locking you out of that job via collective action.
It seems like you don't really understand the meaning of "rent seeking". For something to be rent seeking, it must not provide any additional value. Unions do generally provide value, and in fact one of those values is a protection against actual "rent seeking" from employers, such as pay and benefit cuts (one of the easiest ways to earn more money with no extra value produced).
That's a very US centric view. Unions are ample powerful in other countries without requiring mandatory membership. Previous places I've worked in Europe it's not unusual to have multiple unions represented in a company, and even collaborating together on various negotiations. It wasn't unusual for employees to change unions based on what the union was or wasn't doing for them as a member. Monopolies are absolutely awful, and that applies to unions too.
>So if you want to join a company and enjoy the benefits that a union has fought for without contributing to their continued push for better conditions, you are a parasite and their enemy, and they are justified in locking you out of that job via collective action.
That's a really bizarre quirk of US mindset. So what if someone else gets the benefits of a better working conditions? Great for them, that's a fellow human being who's life now doesn't suck quite so much. That should be celebrated.
If better working conditions is the only value the union provides you, your union sucks.
I've joined unions in the past because of the access to all the other stuff that they can provide, like free legal support, representation in disciplinary situations etc, just as much as working conditions.
So the US has a bit of a unique history here. A less than fun example of this is that the organized labor holiday "May Day" is celebrated in many countries notably excluding the US.
This of course being despite the fact that the date was selected by the AFL (now AFL-CIO, one of the main union federations in the US) to memorialize the general strike in Chicago that ended in the Haymarket Massacre (May 1st 1886 - May 4th 1886).
Labor day didn't become a holiday until after the May Day vs Labor Day debate started. It started as a concept in 1882 but it was not yet celebrated in any significant capacity and most unions pushed to change the day to May day after the Haymarket massacre in 1886. The first state to make it a holiday (Oregon) didn't do so until a year after the debate was already ongoing and it wouldn't become a federal holiday until 1894.
Specifically the federal government pushed for Labor day over May day and chose to commemorate the one and not the other with a federal holiday because of fears that memorialising the Haymarket massacre would further empower the labor movement which was at its peak in the US at the time.
And then in the 1950s the US government would then try to further overwrite May Day with "Loyalty Day" in a McCarthyian attempt to limit May Day's celebration.
> Specifically the federal government pushed for Labor day over May day and chose to commemorate the one and not the other with a federal holiday because of fears that memorialising the Haymarket massacre would further empower the labor movement which was at its peak in the US at the time.
It's absolutely absurd to argue that the labor movement was at its peak in the US in the 1890s. This was the era of the Pullman strike--which the government infamously ended by force--and the Sherman Antitrust Act being used against unions under the theory that they were an illegal monopoly on labor. Labor in the US probably reached its peak after WWII. The 1890s were extremely business friendly.
September Labor day preceded May day in both concept (1882 vs 1886) and legal observance. As you noted, the US made September labor day a public holiday in 1894. If you are aware of any country that made May day a public holiday before that time please tell me; I haven't done an exhaustive search, but here's a sampling of when European countries started observing May 1 as a public holiday:
> It's absolutely absurd to argue that the labor movement was at its peak in the US in the 1890s. This was the era of the Pullman strike--which the government infamously ended by force--
This wasn't just the era of the Pullman strike. This was during the Pullman strike. The federal government specifically tried to push through a labor day federal holiday as a concession to ease tensions during the Pullman strike. They would not push forward May Day as a federal holiday because they saw memorialising the Haymarket Massacre as inflammatory both in general and at that moment in particular given the volatile situation (even though in practice acknowledging the labor struggle's marred history would have been a better bridge towards peace than a concession and a following violent strike break).
> and the Sherman Antitrust Act being used against unions under the theory that they were an illegal monopoly on labor. Labor in the US probably reached its peak after WWII. The 1890s were extremely business friendly.
Yeah the establishment was extremely anti-union. That's why it was the peak of the labor movement at the time. This is exactly the same reason why the late 50s and the 60s were the peak of the civil rights movement at the time. Things were very bad and it was a painful bloody period where the people were rallying with all their might to try and force progress in the right direction. This is the exact time when everyone was out throwing themselves into the gears to try and make the powers that be listen.
> If you are aware of any country that made May day a public holiday before that time please tell me
I don't know of specific countries however the call for May Day to be made a public holiday in all countries was in 1904 and even before that there were demonstrations on May Day in the US and across Europe in the 1890s (in 1890 in particular).
However that's not the important part. The important part is that in the US, even before legal observance, May Day was being observed by unions and those unions would strike on May Day if they weren't willingly given the day off to observe it. Hell the year that Labor day was made a federal holiday, that May Day (before the Pullman Strike had started) there were the May Day riots of 1894 in Cleveland.
And it's not like I'm claiming that May Day was already established outside the US at that point. It grew outside the US later but it was very much an American labor movement holiday and had at that point replaced labor day as the holiday of the worker. Labor day started as a holiday of the worker but the events of the era quickly shifted that date to May Day and Labor day instead became a minor concession from the government and businesses so as to appease workers without giving them the thing they were actively asking for.
Non-Americans thinking their opinion on American politics is wanted or relevant will never stop being funny.
>I've joined unions in the past because of the access to all the other stuff that they can provide, like free legal support, representation in disciplinary situations etc, just as much as working conditions.
Apologies if English isn't your first language, but those things are "working conditions"
I'm an American and I think having some union that you never chose to join dock their fees from your pay is the most anti-American thing I can think of.
Ahh yes, that's right. I can live here and get to have no opinion of any value whatsoever on what surrounds me.
It's hilarious in a kind of tragic way, how Americans continually tell me things are impossible or can't possibly work the way that other countries manage to make them work.
When you're calling workers "parasites", you shouldn't be surprised if people dislike unions. In my experience the unions is just another layer of scammers stealing money from young workers after the employer and the government.
Organized labor does not exist to stoke the ego of people trying to harm their cause. They do much worse than call them "parasites", I promise lol. For example, ruining someone's career with a board complaint is extremely satisfying.
> their employer and new employees who need a job enough that they are willing to work for less money or worse conditions.
What if I want to work for my employer but only for more money? Suppose I'm a rockstar and my employer agrees, but their hands are tied because they can't pay me more and have to instead pay off the pension funds of people that retired a decade ago and older employees
>> What if I want to work for my employer but only for more money? Suppose I'm a rockstar and my employer agrees, but their hands are tied because they can't pay me more and have to instead pay off the pension funds of people that retired a decade ago and older employees
Eventually situations like this bankrupt a company, sadly due to decisions made decades ago. Just because a company's hands are tied does not mean that current employees need to take sub-market wages. They can, if they are being compensated in some other way (unique experience, growth potential, etc) but normally people see the writing on the wall and walk away. Also, company management needs to negotiate contracts which are fair to all three parties -- owners, current union members, future employees who will bear the burden. It is a tough but important balancing act.
Unions exist to redistribute income. From capital to labor, and from workers with higher market wages to those with lower market wages. That management can't award an outsized pay package to a valuable employee without buying everyone else's assent is a feature - that's why people with left-leaning economic politics like them.
I'm not anti-union at all, but I do think there is a very common experience that sours people against them early in their career: that of a mandatory union that docks your already meager pay without any obvious benefits. It of course overlooks the things you enjoy as an employee that the union won and fights to retain (breaks, safety standards, etc). I think anyone who wants unions to succeed needs to think about solving that problem, because unions only succeed on collective action.
> So if you want to join a company and enjoy the benefits that a union has fought for without contributing to their continued push for better conditions, you are a parasite and their enemy, and they are justified in locking you out of that job via collective action.
When this becomes the norm, the union stops working for the workers and work only for itself, its usefulness is gone and can be disbanded.
It has always been the norm. The only difference is that the way it used to work is that if you tried to undercut them by skipping out on fees or undercutting their members' salaries, then a couple guys had a sock party with you in the parking lot. Nowadays we have a lot of political machinery around organized labor to replace physical application of power with organizational application of power. Every now and then the union does indeed stop working for them, which is when things like wildcat strikes occur.
So if you want to join a company and enjoy the benefits that a union has fought for without contributing to their continued push for better conditions, you are a parasite and their enemy, and they are justified in locking you out of that job via collective action.
It seems like you don't really understand the meaning of "rent seeking". For something to be rent seeking, it must not provide any additional value. Unions do generally provide value, and in fact one of those values is a protection against actual "rent seeking" from employers, such as pay and benefit cuts (one of the easiest ways to earn more money with no extra value produced).