this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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Technically sure. But what can unions do? What actual power do they have that they matter?
You're either uninformed or have been blinded by the anti union propaganda. There's a severe power imbalance between a company and an individual worker. Even if you're a highly skilled worker and have, according to the companies that push anti union propaganda, more bargaining power compared to the average worker you're still very likely to get the short end of the stick.
But collectively workers have power. Why don't we have companies that consist solely of shareholders and c suites? Because they produce no value without the workers. The value is generated by the workers and without the workers the company simply won't do anything. But it's hard to coordinate all workers to collectively use their power.
And that's the purpose of unions, to represent the collective bargaining power of the workers. Unions are extremely powerful and that's why companies love to lobby anti union propaganda. If you're a worker you should always be in favor of unions (unless you go even more left in your political views and see unions as a compromise to maintain the capitalist system).
I'm more aiming at the fact that protesting, the thing unions do to make changes happen, is illegal in a couple of states. Just straight up.
Aside from that I do live in Europe, so I'm a little uninformed of current laws against protesting
Wow, that's fucked up. Then there really not much unions can do, they've been effectively defanged.
This is not true in any US state per the 1st amendment of the Constitution. What you may be thinking of are so-called "right to work" states which have effectively defanged unions by making it illegal to require union membership or payment of union dues as a condition of employment. (It's actually a little more complicated than that, but you can easily look it up if you want the details.)
Anyhow, the end result is that in "right to work" states it's almost impossible to unionize.