I looked at the data about union membership and it’s surprising to me how much unionization rates differ within Europe. That likely also suggests that what I know about German unions generalizes less across Europe than I expected. If it’s true that government support for unions leads to unions taking less productivity reducing actions and more actions about providing benefits to workers that would be a huge gain.
There is a good chance that the existing study of unions is highly partisan and about whether union are inherently good or evil, so there might be a huge gain from research about how to get unions to work well. With the current push to unionize Amazon, having that go in a way that results in a good union that cares about employee welfare but that doesn’t want to inhibit Amazons productivity might be very valuable.
I looked at the data about union membership and it’s surprising to me how much unionization rates differ within Europe. That likely also suggests that what I know about German unions generalizes less across Europe than I expected. If it’s true that government support for unions leads to unions taking less productivity reducing actions and more actions about providing benefits to workers that would be a huge gain.
There is a good chance that the existing study of unions is highly partisan and about whether union are inherently good or evil, so there might be a huge gain from research about how to get unions to work well. With the current push to unionize Amazon, having that go in a way that results in a good union that cares about employee welfare but that doesn’t want to inhibit Amazons productivity might be very valuable.