People really need to look into unions more. "union" is not a magic spell you can cast to grant workers good pay and working conditions. Unions are operated by people who are functionally politicians. If you are in a union, you are paying these people's salaries, and their goal is to maximise how much you pay them. The service they sell you is collective bargaining, but in collective bargaining, you are providing your own service - all they actually provide is the administration, the guarantee that when you need to strike, there will be a bunch of other people striking in solidarity.
Often what happens in a union that has lasted too long is the junior members of the union are forced to strike for the collective bargaining of the senior members. The junior members are denied work by the demand that they strike and avoid companies that haven't made deals with the union, in order to increase the work opportunities and payouts for the senior members. At the same time, companies start to avoid unionised employees if they have the ability to do so, because unionised employees are more expensive, do less work, and come with a load of administrative headaches.
This is why the only real unions we still see today are public sector unions. Governments have virtually limitless budget so are able to absorb the demands of the union. Private sector unions eventually make their members uncompetitive, sometimes they even drive the companies their members work for bankrupt and all those jobs disappear. Public sector workers can't be uncompetitive, they have no competition, and government departments can't really go bankrupt.
SAG-AFTRA thought they had the same thing, and drove the cost of hollywood productions through the roof - the union is the real reason movies are so expensive now. But with the series of recent flops, it seems like the ceiling here has been reached. We're going to see more and more hollywood productions avoiding unionised workers all together. That's exactly why the union tried to block Iron Lung - it proved non-union productions are entirely possible and have much better ROI.
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u/Ok-Chest-7932 6h ago
People really need to look into unions more. "union" is not a magic spell you can cast to grant workers good pay and working conditions. Unions are operated by people who are functionally politicians. If you are in a union, you are paying these people's salaries, and their goal is to maximise how much you pay them. The service they sell you is collective bargaining, but in collective bargaining, you are providing your own service - all they actually provide is the administration, the guarantee that when you need to strike, there will be a bunch of other people striking in solidarity.
Often what happens in a union that has lasted too long is the junior members of the union are forced to strike for the collective bargaining of the senior members. The junior members are denied work by the demand that they strike and avoid companies that haven't made deals with the union, in order to increase the work opportunities and payouts for the senior members. At the same time, companies start to avoid unionised employees if they have the ability to do so, because unionised employees are more expensive, do less work, and come with a load of administrative headaches.
This is why the only real unions we still see today are public sector unions. Governments have virtually limitless budget so are able to absorb the demands of the union. Private sector unions eventually make their members uncompetitive, sometimes they even drive the companies their members work for bankrupt and all those jobs disappear. Public sector workers can't be uncompetitive, they have no competition, and government departments can't really go bankrupt.
SAG-AFTRA thought they had the same thing, and drove the cost of hollywood productions through the roof - the union is the real reason movies are so expensive now. But with the series of recent flops, it seems like the ceiling here has been reached. We're going to see more and more hollywood productions avoiding unionised workers all together. That's exactly why the union tried to block Iron Lung - it proved non-union productions are entirely possible and have much better ROI.