There are many skilled professions which are highly unionized; e.g., the various TV and film production unions. Which professions are and aren't unionized is, to a large extent, just a quirk of historical circumstance.
They have professional associations - the most successful unions ever, not least because they pretend not to be unions. See the medical profession as a good example.
Funnily enough, even if they don't call it explicitly, some of the highest paying professions in the world - consulting, finance, law, medicine - all have pseudo-unionized structures in place. The only difference being uniformity in pay, which is a feature I've mostly seen only in US unions.
Historically, professions = Upper/Ruling Classes. Members of the ruling class don't (at least historically want/need) form unions precisely because they are/were the ruling class. [Edit: Professional Associations i believe were fairly common, as a vehicle to further the interests of a specific profession.]
Yep. This is the big American secret the working class can't seem to discover.
The elite have busted the unions, but professional associations are stronger than ever. Doctors do it to avoid free trade, they are protectionist, and surprise! They get paid for it.
The primary purpose of professional associations is to protect the wealth of the members, and this is done by lobbying for protectionism.
Doctors and lawyers provide a good example of how unions (though they don't refer to themselves as that) can be embedded into the legal framework. With these unions also having control over the number of newly qualified workers admitted each year, supply is also sufficiently curtailed.
Doctors have a guild: the AMA. Lawyers have a guild: the ABA. Neither are the same things as unions but they have similar effects. The ABA and AMA also have large roles in professional education. Both also have major roles in accreditation and regulation of the profession. Unlike unions, they do not collectively bargain on behalf of individual workers. They aren't subject to the many regulations associated with organized labor.
They also enjoy broad exemptions to antitrust law which would otherwise apply. It's why other classes of worker cannot have the same type of protective guild -- it's legal when the ABA or AMA do it and illegal when someone else does it.
This isn't strictly true. Professional athletes in major leagues are unionized, and their jobs are highly specialized and well paid. The Writers Guild of America is another union that represents a non-manual labor profession. You could also consider the American Medical Association as a pseudounion guild that restricts entry into the medical field and keeps wages high.
Being a talented professional and being pro-union is not mutually exclusive.
Unions can (and oftentimes do) serve as a counter to employers leverage, while admittedly reducing workplace flexibility.
Unions have achieved worker-rights that are now taken for granted, keeping these will need entities working towards that
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