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Because they shouldn't start their own union. Unions are across companies, having a single union for a single company doesn't make much sense. Take the UAW, they don't just cover General Motor, they cover all workers in that sector, giving them more power and influence.

It's the same with a Star Bucks union, that's silly and not cost effective. You have a "restaurants (and cafe's)"- union. Take McDonalds, they have an agreement with a union in Denmark, 3F. 3F covers fast food staff, construction workers, factory workers, paramedics and many more. They are hugely powerful.



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why don't they unionize?

Possibly dumb question: why don't they unionize?

It seems like that kind of defeats the purpose of the union: to create a unified bargaining entity for the workers. If there are two or three unions for the same type of work, then their negotiation power isn't as strong.

I wonder why they need a union. Is something currently not working in their favor?

Probably because the team here would still be acting as an individual unit - this isn't a union for all workers that cuts across the entire industry and it's workforce.

I imagine that this may be true, but only if there's a single union in the industry. Why on Earth would that be the case?

As workers tend to have one goal, to have less of their labor time expropriated, there really isn't a reason to have more than one global union. Walmart has over half a trillion in revenue and over two million workers, and it makes sense a union containing those workers be of that size.

Also, if carpenters work for UPS, should they be in the carpenters union or the Teamsters? Large industrial unions do away with such jurisdictional problems.


Yeah, right. Why don't they just unionize?

There doesn't necessarily need to be just one. You can have a few that cover an industry that are bigger than an employee specific one while still having competition between unions. For example I work for the NHS and there are multiple unions I could join, all of which are consulted on pay deals.

I don't know the history exactly, but my assumption is that trying to bootstrap an industry-wide union from nothing is exceedingly difficult, while making one at a single company is much more viable. Presumably the idea would be to merge the company-specific ones into industry ones after they're more stable.

Ideally, shouldn't there be multiple unions within a workforce, to compete with each other, just as there are multiple corporations?

Why should they unionize ? There are so many firms and corps and people who should do that. But they don't.

Why should they be different?


Traditional unions target specific job role at specific locations, where you only need people in that job at that location to vote for unionization. It seems like a lofty goal to try to unionize the whole company in one go, when you don't have a track record of successes at a small scale you can point to as reasons that this union is a good idea on a large scale.

Because once you do that to one union shop, no union shop will work with you. To make it work, you need to have a critical mass on-board.

It's undesirable because the company shouldn't be forced to allow unions.

Maybe the company thinks unions are inefficient or doesn't like the collective bargaining power (in extreme cases it resembles a monopoly). Companies and workers are entitled to their opinion. Workers can choose to work at companies that allow unions.

Of course management (multiple people) should be more powerful than an individual worker.


That's why they need a union.

I've often asked this question. Why doesn't every worker from every field form a union? It is always better to negotiate as a group then as an individual.

Our employees are saving a lot of money from WFH, and they are not giving that to salaries.

You're saying that only the least paid profession should have a union and no other profession should have one? I don't think that makes sense. More than one union can exist at once.


Lots of different types of unions exist. Seems silly to throw the idea out because some unions fought for things that aren't popular with this crowd. Instead make a union that fights for the things you want. They are democratic institutions after all.
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