Unions, when invented, were a great thing. That anybody thinks there's still any good unions around proves P.T. Barnum right: There's a sucker born every minute.
The sad thing is that in Europe the employee unions managed to sell many benefits as reasonable for the employer unions, like:
- Paid sickleave that doesn't count as vacation
- Several weeks of vacation per year
- Voluntary and paid overtime for all workers, including salaried
- Maternity/paternity leave of several months
- Several month notice for layoffs
- Minimum wages high enough to support you
Of course it's not all sunshine and rainbows, there are all kinds on smaller stupid things the unions insist keeping alive as they might worsen the benefits of some workers (even if they would benefit some other workers).
They also have managed to make themselves seemingly irrevelevant, as many younger workers believe all those existing benefits are rights that cannot be taken away.
Some of the main benefits of unions are now rights that cannot be taken away. More things are laws that will be hard to change, even if Unions were to suddenly disappear. OSHA rules, workers comp, etc, will not go away easily. Unions have bloated and stagnated in their bargaining power, though, and I do think collective bargaining would work much better with smaller, more nimble groups and better, more modern methods of communication.
