Historically, American unions have had an adversarial relationship with the owners, and the government has usually sided with the owners.
Some (ie Sarah Taber) have informed speculation that this is a consequence of the systems created for the American version of Slavery.
One specific note: in the ?70s?, the Union at General Motors asked for access to all the company Financials and a dedicated seat on the board of governers. Essentially, to be made partners in the company. GM’s owners refused and conceded additional wages and benefits instead.
I don’t know what the history in Europe is, but my understanding is that Union membership is a much higher % of workforce, and the government supports unions (because when 50% of your voters are in Union households, the political parties don’t put anti-unions planks in thier platforms)
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.
Historically, American unions have had an adversarial relationship with the owners, and the government has usually sided with the owners. Some (ie Sarah Taber) have informed speculation that this is a consequence of the systems created for the American version of Slavery. One specific note: in the ?70s?, the Union at General Motors asked for access to all the company Financials and a dedicated seat on the board of governers. Essentially, to be made partners in the company. GM’s owners refused and conceded additional wages and benefits instead.
I don’t know what the history in Europe is, but my understanding is that Union membership is a much higher % of workforce, and the government supports unions (because when 50% of your voters are in Union households, the political parties don’t put anti-unions planks in thier platforms)
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.