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There are a lot of really good answers in this thread, reasons why historically unions have been a good idea (even if some notable examples have gone too far), but I want to point out that they almost entirely apply to private-sector unions. In the US we also have truly massive PUBLIC-sector unions, which (as far as I know) there is almost no good justification for. Their power derives from the government, which means that when they "negotiate", the government is the one on both sides of the table (negotiating about money that, as always, isn't theirs). It's always seemed insane to me, but maybe somebody here has a good justification...?
Well, the justification is the normal one, that workers need collective bargaining power to get a fair deal form there employer. There's no reason that logic doesn't apply to public sector jobs the same way it applies to private sector.
As you point out, it's the argument against public sector unions that is different. Because the bosses don't lose money if they pay more (they just raise taxes), because the people in the union are also in positions of authority over the populace and can abuse that power (police unions negotiating for fewer penalties for excessive force), etc.
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Insofar as part of the point of a union is to protect workers from abusive or unsafe work environments that would seem to apply just as well to government employees as private employees.
The actual history here is that unions didn't do squat about unsafe work environments. The workplace safety revolution was a top-down thing, imposed by management on a grudging and resentful labor force. Why did management do it? Because the shift to no-fault worker's compensation put a price on danger, and companies responded rationally by paying people to make the workplace safer. Often the safety rules were imposed by insurance companies in exchange for lower premiums.
This is a huge success story for well-designed incentives, the sort of thing that ought to be in every history textbook as a demonstration of how meaningful change actually happens, and yet people keep attributing it to unions for some reason.
In one memorable example, the Chicago Plumbers Union lobbied until the mid-1980s to continue requiring lead pipes until they were banned federally because only union plumbers could install lead lines. This probably had a negative safety impact for the plumbers themselves, has definitely impacted generations of Chicago residents in ways that less union-friendly jurisdictions avoided. But hey, job security!
New York City still requires lead shower pans, probably for similar reasons.
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That isn't sufficient justification. Public sector union power does not result in avoiding abuse but in stacking the deck in favor of union members resulting in overpayment, lower standards and inefficiency.
Who is to protect the rest of society from the goverment and the union and union employees collectively using their influence to extract more resources for themselves? Or from running goverment services in a subpar manner. There is a very real agency problem here.
But generally making sure that power used for the ideal of avoiding abuse or mistreatment isn't used to stack the deck in favor of said group that supposedly needs to be protected is one of the most important problems in western societies. We genuinely should care a lot more about not stacking the deck in favor of said groups.
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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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It isn’t even just that (and enough) but effectively the union gets to vote (and fund) for who they negotiate with. And the person paying for the arrangement isn’t on either side of the table.
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