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US Labor Organization AFL-CIO Urges Game Developers To Unionize In Open Letter (gamasutra.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gamasutra: In the wake of Activision Blizzard's massive layoff wave, a move that was announced in the same call as the company's record quarter, the union federation AFL-CIO has published an open letter to game developers urging members of the industry to organize. The AFL-CIO itself is the largest labor organization in the United States and counts 55 individual unions (and more than 12.5 million workers) among its affiliates. The letter, readable in full on Kotaku, calls out many of the issues that have prompted conversations about unionization in just recent years like excessive crunch, toxic work conditions, inadequate pay, and job instability. The industry, points out AFL-CIO's secretary-treasurer Liz Shuler, boasted sales 3.6 times greater than those of the film industry in 2018, yet much of that financial success isn't felt by the developers working on the games that generate those billions. "Executives are always quick to brag about your work. It's the talk of every industry corner office and boardroom. They pay tribute to the games that capture our imaginations and seem to defy economic gravity. They talk up the latest innovations in virtual reality and celebrate record-smashing releases, as your creations reach unparalleled new heights," says Shuler.
"My question is this: what have you gotten in return? They get rich. They get notoriety. They get to be crowned visionaries and regarded as pioneers. What do you get? Outrageous hours and inadequate paychecks. Stressful, toxic work conditions that push you to your physical and mental limits. The fear that asking for better means risking your dream job. [...] Change will happen when you gain leverage by joining together in a strong union. And, it will happen when you use your collective voice to bargain for a fair share of the wealth you create every day. No matter where you work, bosses will only offer fair treatment when you stand together and demand it."
"My question is this: what have you gotten in return? They get rich. They get notoriety. They get to be crowned visionaries and regarded as pioneers. What do you get? Outrageous hours and inadequate paychecks. Stressful, toxic work conditions that push you to your physical and mental limits. The fear that asking for better means risking your dream job. [...] Change will happen when you gain leverage by joining together in a strong union. And, it will happen when you use your collective voice to bargain for a fair share of the wealth you create every day. No matter where you work, bosses will only offer fair treatment when you stand together and demand it."
But I find these days most Union leaders are more in it for themselves than the workers and they are looking for more union due paying members to support their lifestyle or political ambition
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
...imagine that! And after it's done, send us money so we can chase another industry offshore by making demands to publishers. But hey, we're doing it to protect you... This isn't a boots on the ground industry like mining or trucking, this is a job that can be done from anywhere (and cheaper). Yes, quality may suffer, but that's going to be what hurts them, not strikes. Bad games don't (well, they shouldn't), sell.
Too many differences in skill level between workers. If you all had the same skills it might work. Good luck
Unionization is the domain of the unimaginative; it's for people who see no way to improve let alone disrupt their industry.
Sounds like every corporation I've ever worked for. "Those" people are after your jobs! Work harder and don't take vacation or we'll buy robots! It's your fault we're moving to China, why can't YOU live on $5 an hour? We're a team aren't we??
Sometimes union membership is obligatory, which does not seem right or wise.
Also, like another AC said above, there are HUGE HUGE differences in skill between different tech workers. You have some who are useless or even worse than useless because they take the time of people who are competent, and then you have some who are John Carmack alikes, and everything in between. It is not reasonable for those to be paid the same based on having the same seniority.
Try to get a C-level suit fired. Let me know how that goes. But please, feel free to continue the baby genius food fight.
So let's take a look at that. How has unionizing helped income equality in the film industry? Apparently not much, as two of the five companies with the worst CEO to median worker pay ratio are film studios, and a third is a TV studio.
If you look through that list, you get the sense that the presence of robust competition within the industry is the important factor, not unions. About a third of the companies on that list enjoy IP monopolies (copyrights, patents) or regulatory monopolies (ISPs). And several of the remainder have close to a natural monopoly.
Look at German unions, intimately tied to the businesses their workers are employed. The business’ welfare is the union’s welfare. Less stupid shit happens.
Mega unions like AFL-CIO not so much. The big wigs in it aren’t working stiffs at the same places themselves but just political whores. They have so many businesses under their belt, they strike and the employees suffer because the business dies, they don’t care because they think they proved a point. It’s just trading one master for another.
The game industry needs to unionize but the workers don’t need a new master.
Sounds like every corporation I've ever worked for. "Those" people are after your jobs! Work harder and don't take vacation or we'll buy robots! It's your fault we're moving to China, why can't YOU live on $5 an hour? We're a team aren't we??
I've never heard that from any company. I haven't heard any genuine secondhand accounts of it either.
We can read the AFL-CIO language right here though. It's not a made up story. It's what they actually said.
Unionizing is the exactly opposite of divide and conquer. You might need to go look up what the word "Union" means.
You're strawmaning. You're trying to redirect the conversation away from "Game devs are being taken advantage of and should organized for better bargaining power" to "The heads of the Union you form might be corrupt so don't form one in the first place". The Stawman here is a big, scary Union Boss.
This has _nothing_ to do with negativity and everything to do with the fact that you, by yourself, do not have enough leverage to secure decent or even safe working conditions. This is a historic fact. It's not something that's up for debate. You by yourself cannot beat Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates in negotiations.
Of course you're just parroting a long standing anti-Union straw man. Are you getting paid to do this or just trolling for fun? Either way you're the 20th century equivalent of this. Didn't work last time either.
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Besides bringing you weekends, 40-hour work weeks, an end to child labor, etc, what have the unions ever done for the US?
\s
Having visited the Mechanical Engineer's union and had the same people running that union branch also overseeing testing, and working the front desk (yes, really!) I can tell you that not every union is out for their own benefit, although the meta organizations and their leadership might be.
Having said that, I am not sure game developers are best served by unionizing over simple peer pressure. Friend's don't let friends join big developers. If enough of the community stops working for these companies, they will have to improve working conditions to regain and retain workers. If these people stop selling their souls just to work at a big company, they can work in an adjacent career path while working together with friends to create the videogames they want, perhaps not on as big of a budget, and eventually help toggle these giants of the industry. Most of whom have no retained talent themselves because their own hubris prevents it.
Excuse me while I laugh my ass completely off...
No...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
EA, Activision, et all. They deserve this.
Corporatism != Free Market
The US Tech industry will see developers shot by riot cops before they allow unionisation.
Silicon Valley will not take the risk. People will be killed if this gains traction, even in video games.
I've never heard that from any company. I haven't heard any genuine secondhand accounts of it either.
I have.
One anecdote to counter another.
We can read the AFL-CIO language right here though. It's not a made up story. It's what they actually said.
Oh, so you have heard of a genuine second hand account, and were polite enough to point it out.
Any other lies you want to tell today or will Atlas shrug?
But I work in a small tightknit boutique where we see each other as family! That kind of culture and ethos could never change, it's far more important to pursue an artistic vision and produce a work of quality of which we can be justly proud as having pushed the boundaries of what is capable than just go for the money. That would never happen.
There are some cases in which union protection is important. Unfortunately, they don't always provide that protection, and one wonders why. One case where the union fell flat recently is the proposition in California that passed requiring changes in how EMTs handled emergencies during their breaks. This was promoted as making sure that emergency services were available to all, but they already were. The only change was that the big ambulance firm would no longer have to pay them overtime if they had to drop everything and take a call during their breaks.
The EMT's union, which I think was the same one that now wants to unionize game developers, declined to write anything in opposition to this proposition, and didn't mount any viable publicity campaign aginst the proposition. Thus, those EMTs who are out to save your life got screwed over.
Bruce Perens.
Instead of contributing to your company's success and your own career you can enrich some sleezy mob, er, union bosses, directly out of your own pocket, and they can funnel your money to Democrats almost exclusively whether you agree with or want to vote for them or not, and work to tear down any right-to-work laws and force you into the Borg collective. Pay and promotions will be based strictly on how many years your fat ass has hung around instead of any measurable degree of skill or talent, and everybody will get the same negotiated rates. If you're more talented than that moron over there it won't matter any longer. And don't go above and beyond because you'll probably step on some useless shill's job who has a cousin or a brother-in-law somewhere and he'll scream to his union rep and have you written up. Sounds like a win to me. Hey we're some union assholes and we're here to help... ruin your life.
to fit your anti-Union narrative. Then you can believe that the AFL-CIO guy has the right idea. Does he have his own agenda? Hell yeah. So do I. I want to shift the country left so I can get single payer healthcare and my friends and family get guaranteed access to the stuff. Unions are part of that since it's hard to move left when the electorate is struggling to survive.
An agenda isn't a bad thing when your interests align. Assuming you're not planing to make a career as a right wing troll ala Roger Stone or Karl Rove then your interest are aligned with mine. Heck, even then most guys don't make it to Stone or Rove's level. They get ground up into paste by the machine.
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Now you just need to get a hold of a time machine so you can go back and make those deals before the mass lay-offs.
for an organization with 12.5 million (que Dr Evil pinky) members. That's 2.4 cents per person. If he's in it for himself he's doing a _terrible_ job of it.
He'd be much better off going into Televangist work. Creflo Dollar's worth $27 million and has been doing his schtick for about 30 years (give or take). That's about $900k/yr. He did that on the backs of just 30,000 folks in his church.
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with a more centralized workforce. You need a big organization like the AFL-CIO so that folks in one industry can strike and be supported by folks half a world away until the strike's over.
And I mentioned this on another thread but the big wigs don't make all that much. It only sounds like a lot down in the trenches because we've lost so much ground over the years. Their president makes $300k/yr, which is ridiculously low for an organization the size of the AFL-CIO. The chick with a nice rack who hocks pharmaceuticals at doctor's offices makes that (seriously, I know one).
$300k/yr doesn't make you anybody's master. What it does get you is access to a network of workers who'll support you when you strike and who you'll support when they strike. AKA "solidarity". You have to do it nationally or they just move to a new state every time you try it.
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Who wants to pay a US "game" professional union wages?
With overtime?
English speaking nations with different tax laws and exchange rates exist.
Their workers can code and can be further educated to new learn game code.
Their university system educates on merit. Math and code. Their artists can paint, draw, animate. They have musicians ready for any type of game.
Their nations gov will offer code education, great tax concessions to attract any type of new US investment and no US style activity.
Low cost housing, low crime, clean streets, a supportive government, healthcare and low tax rates to attract US investment.
Contrast that with a CA, its living and working conditions, changing tax rates and gov who wants to fully regulate your employee cafeterias.
Well educated english speaking nations are ready and waiting for the US to go full union and will be accepting of US brands setting up new workforces.
No protests, no demands, no direct action, no flying picket, no grievance procedure, no social media at the picket line, no sympathy strike, no work to rule.
Who would risk their digital brand and digital support reputation by telling users who buy their game software that all support is out on a sympathy strike?
That GPU support will take months due to another strike in the USA?
That the needed patch to keep a game working will be weeks late due to wage issues and US union demands?
That a game that has to be ready and that all the creative media release work says will be ready is not ready due to a strike?
The brand and investors took all the risk in digital game production.
Now they have to give it all away to unions? Thats future investment lost to wage demands.
Go full union, see how that works out for US code jobs. Nations can learn to code and their wages/gov will attract US investment away from US union workers.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
So a union doesn't work in one case, let's just not bother with them any more? Sure.
In unrelated news, chemotherapy didn't work against an area man's cancer, so it's been decided to stop chemotherapy for all future cancer patients.
the big ambulance firm
There's your problem right there.
Point dis-proven.
I say go for it. The union kept me out of a firing line for layoffs where I'm at and management was doing a spin the bottle of sorts for layoffs. Afterwards my direct boss told me I made the right choice staying in the union when I was asked to switch over once. Saved my bacon even after I worked on projects that ultimately saved them tons of money.
One Pro-Union Troll heard from.
Fuck off. This conversation is for non-trolls only. If you don't have anything useful to add, or any evidence to the contrary. Simple gainsay of what the other poster said isn't an argument. Next!
Welcome to the world of employment.
Please queue by the meat grinder on the left for your pay cheque.
Requiem for the American Dream
I've never heard that from any company.
The multi-billion dollar corporation I work for is doing just this to the guys who make the products we sell right now.
Endless cost-cutting has resulted in poor quality, meaning customers leaving. Guess who is being told they have to take a pay cut?
If you've guessed the CEO I have a bridge to sell you.
I've never heard that from any company.
The multi-billion dollar corporation I work for is doing just this to the guys who make the products we sell right now.
Endless cost-cutting has resulted in poor quality, meaning customers leaving. Guess who is being told they have to take a pay cut?
If you've guessed the CEO I have a bridge to sell you.
And now I still don’t think I've heard a genuine secondhand account.
Unemployment is 4%.
No stem employees lost jobs at activision. It was marketing and publicity people who couldn't "learn to code' who lost jobs. When house gets cleaned, those are the people who are expendable.
For years as union president. Total compensation = 0. Sorry if the facts contradict your opinions.
Have a Twinkie.
Remind me how it's just one case?
Yes, lets outsource more jobs to India and China. Because this has worked well for other union jobs. Maybe the next generation of game developers can vote for the next Trump who will promise to bring those jobs back.
Lessee, one from Kohath and a 'rebuttal' from an AC. You lose, AC. Moniker posts of anecdotes may be suspect but AC posts of anecdotes are totally worthless.
Doing so, however, would be a lie.
Vlad30 nailed it in his post and had his Score not already been maxed out, I would have tossed some mod points his way.
I've worked within the confines of a Unionized company for more than twenty years now and, to be honest, they impress me less and less every year. Thankfully / hopefully, I will retire from this circus soon.
When contract negotiations begin, Union Leadership will fight tooth and nail for two things:
1) Maintaining or adding head count
2) Pay raises for their members
While the hard core Unionites will disagree with me, the Union fights for the above for one reason only: Getting one or both ultimately leads to more Union Dues being paid to the Union. ( #1 is obvious, #2 is because Union Dues are a percentage of a Union Members base pay. So a pay raise for the member = a pay raise for the Union )
That's it. That's all. That is the ONLY goal the Union has. Make. More. Money.
This is why our healthcare premiums keep increasing every year because the Union doesn't give a damn about how much their members have to pay out of pocket for health insurance. As long as they get their dues, everything is golden. No one seems to notice that their meager annual raise gets negated by the rising health care premiums.
Sometimes I wonder if the Union has a secret agreement with the company during negotiations to get that paltry raise and / or headcount in exchange for allowing the company to dump more of its healthcare costs on their employees. The Union doesn't lose anything in the process, so it's a Win-Win for them. Not so much for the employees though.
That said, the other problem with Unionizing is mediocrity.
The Rockstars will do their thing for a while, until they ask themselves why they're busting their ass while the Idiot ( who doesn't even know how to turn his computer on without help ) is making the exact same pay and benefits. Eventually, they give up, scale back their efforts and their light doesn't shine quite as brightly as it used to.
On the flip side, the Idiot realizes he doesn't really need to bust his ass like the Rockstar does since they are making the same pay and benefits. There isn't any motivation or incentive here to learn or increase their productivity because, in a Union, there can't be a pay / benefit difference for those performing the same work. This person does just enough so they don't get fired.
As a result, over time, the performance of any given group tends to trend downwards towards the Idiot side of things. They meet somewhere in the middle and you end up with a team who is mediocre at best.
The final insult is when the layoffs start. Once Unionized, your amazing Rockstar skills are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is Seniority. Whomever has been there the longest, will have the most Seniority. Layoffs start from the least Senior and work their way up to the top. So if you're a Rockstar who has been there for five years, but the Idiot has been there longer, guess who gets the axe first ? :|
Once upon a time, the Unions definitely had their place in the working world. These days, however, I think they've been corrupted by the money they bring in and the idea that they represent their members is merely a smokescreen for their true agenda.
That being: Make as much money as they can at the expense of those they're pretending to represent.
Rejecting self serving political leaders is equatable to wanting an experienced virgin for a wife. That self interest is what makes them stick in the filth and acquire the skills and connections necessary to get what their voters - or in the American version, their donors - want.
The only problem with Unions is that they're too easily bought. by the industry and aren't as well connected to the mafia as they were in the good old days. Back in Ford days, and employer messing with the workers wouldn't worry bout how much it would cost to bribe the judge. They'd worry about their sons and daughters corpses floating top the river. And even that barely got workers anything.
The next time you go to the DMV remember that the point of their job is to serve the customers, you. Will you buy video games developed by people as competent at development as the DMV is at service.
Methinks Oli doth protest too much.
...or freedom from studio contracts that kept actors chained to MGM et all. Unions did that. Remember the writers strike from a few years ago? Where studios used loopholes to not pay writers for content streamed online, that the studios were profiting from? The word begins with a u...
So another union-bashing post were one of the primary complaints is...that unions don't have vastly more power than they do now. So what would you have them do? Seize the means of production, comrade? Would it be enough to take the board of directors hostage until the cave to demands, or would you recommend breaking out the guillotines?
But, back to residuals. All those episodes of old TV shows on streaming services or broadcast TV? Writers and actors get a check for that. Small checks but they get them. When someone buys a bundle of old games on Steam, EA may get a check, but the original programmers don't.
not one green dollar
"Unemployment is 4%."
During Stalin's famines the Soviet statistical agency reported record harvests.
Keep on believin'!
Germany will cease to exist in a few decades, because Germans have no money, no time for kids.
The turks, Arabs and Africans Merkel and her fellow moneychangers import, are Germans by documents only.
It will be Allahmania soon. A kind of cold Lebanon.
So your feelings are based on YOUR feelings, not reality. So why do you feel like you want the union leaders to be more in it for themselves? Because unions are only the way for workers to get equal bargaining power in the labour market and you don't want commercial businesses put at equality, you want a massive imbalance in their favour. So if you see union leaders you suddenly want them to be bad people, screwing others over.
Yet not once do you exhort that businesses should get rid of managers, managers who you will, if pushed, admit that they are more in it for themselves than they are for the business benefit, if only because not doing so would paint you as extremist and blinkered.
So if you were correct, and you have nothing other than your own personal desires, either to exploit others (so you would do so as a union leader and therefore presume everyone else does too) or to protect the privileges of the capital class over the working class, then why are you not exhorting to the expulsion of AT LEAST the C*O and boards.
Here's a test for you. Go find a board member of a business that is publicly traded, therefore the people put forward are voted for by shareholders, that is not also in at least four other jobs.
Now if that business goes under, they've lost less than 20% of their pay. Those who have only the one job in that company lose 100%.
Now what makes you think that a board whose investment of their livelihood is one fifth has the best interests OF that business in mind?
Or you've looked for the "wrong things", i.e. you've looked for higher returns or something to do with capitalist "winning".
Pay is better when unionised. That weekend you get off? Unions did that. Minimum wage? Unions. Go tell me that if there were no minimum wage those on minimum wage would be better off.
But what I have seen is CEOs deliberately killing a company to cash in while there is some value there. I've seen CEOs who were given massive payrises in the good times for their "sterling work in increasing profits" then given massive payrises in the bad times to "incentivise the best to turn this company around", and in both cases the workers got canned and reduced pay.
And the only way to even the playing field for the workers is to unionise.
Or are you going to demand that we disband corporations and have owner-run businesses only, since even you will have to admit that business leaders are frequently corrupt, so if we should not have unions, then we should not have business managers.
If your job can be given to someone living off $5/hr why shouldn't it? Do you deserve it more than them? Does your family deserve to make a living more than them? America has been shouting "Compete!" to the world since after WW2. The rest of the world heard.
If working there requires me to be part of the workforce, under the general rule of management and the business working rules, then in what way is it ANY different to it being a union required worplace too?
Yet you will only whinge about the VERY FEW places that are union workplaces (and do you want the non union workers getting the benefits of the union negotiated payrise? If not, then the non union workers will have to negotiate their own payrise personally, and no business wants that expense, meaning the non union workers will get no payrises) but not the 100% of places that do not require you to sign up to management rule.
After all, if the job is to make widget X, then as long as I make widget X, why does there need to be any agreement to anything else? What I wear is irrelevant. What I say is irrelevant, what I do other than that is irrelevant. How many jobs have you heard (I presume you have not had any jobs personally) with "other duties as required"? Every damn one of them. Take it from me. And if I don't do them, then I am in the wrong and disciplined.
So why does there need to be management at all?
I make widgetX, I need to make 15000 in a month. I make 15000 by day 22 and I go home for the rest of the month.
Why would management put me up for disciplinary action for absenteeism?
Why is wearing jeans and T shirt EVER part of my job?
And why do I have to agree to ANY contract, other than "Thou shalt make 15,000 WidgetX each month"?
Mangement should be there to ensure that I get the stuff to make widgetX, count me making widgetX and properly (or pay someone to do so), and sell the stuff. EVERYTHING else is and should be irrelevant and not an agreement between us.
Yet they demand I agree to terms and conditions above and beyond that.
Including "and other duties as assigned".
Yet you don't care, you only want to demand that somehow being "forced" into unionising with others is bad. Never complain about being forced into working more than the job requirements.
It's sure given me a good standard of living though. I live in the 3rd world and have been outcompeting american out of jobs for 15 years. Already have enough for retirement, all the work I'm doing presently is just gravy. Unionizing will just make the lives of people like me better.
Therefore we should not have CEOs.
You're a moron.
Unions do not cause out sourcing or migration of business. The level of exploitation and oppression does! Want to be poisoned by your local factory and make slave wages? Then you can compete against the shitholes of the world too! Unions have little to do with it other than to create an excuse and a target for propaganda who doesn't have the funding to counter it..
management is everything; for the business and the union and the government. the type of system does not matter as much as the people it runs upon. just as crap hardware will suck with linux or any other OS.
ALL the same flaws in management happen in all kinds of organizations. These stupid arguments should be leveled against humans and for AI replacing management.
Unions have become completely powerless since globalization zeroes their bargaining power. There is no industry now that cannot be outsourced or moved elsewhere. Everybody knows that. The class struggle is over and the worker class has lost. Adapt.
You see this as a bad thing. I do not. I will toast to the extinction of the German people and cheer the destruction of German culture.
If you don't maintain a thing it breaks down. What did you expect? Try skipping your cars oil changes for 40 years and let me know how that turns out for you. And do that while somebody is putting sugar in your tank.
We need to start passing pro-Union laws to protect American's collective bargaining rights again. Eliminating "right to work" (my God the right wing is good at marketing) laws is a good start. Also we need a ton of new laws banning companies from punishing workers for Unionizing. And anti Union busting laws too.
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the Screen actors guild has for decades insured actors get paid for work. Yeah, everybody points to Tom Cruise's big paydays and forgets all the smaller productions out there.
And don't forget all the blue collar folks who make movies happen. Sets don't build themselves. I know guys who did that work and they wouldn't trade their Union for anything.
As for Income inequity, their Union got them better pay. If the boss makes 100,000,000,000/yr and your making $100,000 yeah, income inequality is pretty bad there. But your Union (and you too, don't forget, the Union is Yout!) got you that $100k. They'd pay you $20k if they could get a way with it and without a Union to negotiate they would.
I think I finally see the problem though (if I may go a bit off topic). People have stopped thinking of themselves as "Union" and started thinking of a Union as a third party negotiator you just happen to hire. Folks forgot what it is to actually _belong_ to a Union. Now I wonder who put that idea into their heads
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/f...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne...
and we're way past envy. 32,000 Americans will die of treatable illnesses this year. A decade ago it was 45k but the ACA slowed it down.
We got that because people banded together against the insurance companies. It's the same for wages. I can break a stick. Bind a hundred of them and I can't break it anymore. Ancient fucking China figured that out. Why the hell can't you? They're gonna eat you alive.
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne...
Your feudal overlords sure do appreciate your keeping their boots clean pro-bono.
Game developers will never get a union. The companies will off-shore the labor before they pay more than minimum wage. Every kid with an X-box seems to think that being a game developer would be cool. It's not, it's crap work, and nothing like playing those games. The union is simply making a power move to get more people in and collect more union dues.
Here we come!
http://saveie6.com/
Criemer is that you?
http://saveie6.com/
I have. It depends where you work. They won't use that exact verbage but it will be along theines of wow that cheap contractor we only pay 20 an hour wrote more lines of code than you with an an uncomfortable laugh or now how many tickets did you do? Are overseas teams handled more?
Then the boss will look at your phone on your desk and go hmm and walk away and make the assumption you text or are on Facebook and don't work like the Indians do. This of course in an effort to scare you or let you know he is not happy with your performance and let you know he can get more for less if you don't speed up etc.
http://saveie6.com/
I know people who were physically threatened for crossing a union. I don't know anyone who has been physically threatened for crossing a corporation. Both have examples of downsides, but the union downsides are much worse.
And meanwhile, in the real world those 57 year old guys who have spend 30 years working at the company can just pack up and find another job.
Oh, hang on. No, they can't
Out economy is controlled by monopolies by greater extent than even 20 years ago. So unionization is needed.
Unfortunately, US union are simple pension scams by labor lawyers. If you retire with $500k pension it is the same as accumulating $12.5m. And before you retire you make all your kids Union officials too.