> Because with per-corporation unions, your employees joining makes you less competitive. But with sectoral systems it doesn't because your competitors all have to join too.
Doesn't this have the same problem, but now for your whole country? That industry in your country becomes less competitive against the same industry in another country.
Many of the more productive countries that have sectoral unions end up competing on quality over price. Although that may have more to do with their economies being more advanced. A German worker simply could not survive on Indonesian wages, regardless of unionization.
Competitiveness is about more than just price. One of the best ways for first world countries to compete is through automation. Now you need higher skilled workers, because they're building and maintaining manufacturing equipment instead of sewing textiles by hand in a sweatshop, but you also need fewer of them and then they can each be paid more without compromising competitiveness.
But you're still back to the original problem, because you're not just competing with Indonesia, you're also competing with other industrialized countries that have skilled workers but may not have unions. And you'll have to pay the market wage in those countries, which will certainly be higher than the median wage in Indonesia, but having a union that e.g. prevents bad workers from being discharged would still put your industry at a disadvantage.
That's all very abstract, but in reality the countries with sectoral unions all compete relatively well. And the cohesion provided by sectoral unions is enough of a social benefit that you rarely find their employer class willing to destroy that contract. Countries are more than their economies.
> the countries with sectoral unions all compete relatively well.
Relative to what? The question isn't really whether Poland is more or less competitive than California (the other differences between them would dominate), it's where they would each be with the other system.
> And the cohesion provided by sectoral unions is enough of a social benefit that you rarely find their employer class willing to destroy that contract.
It also tends to result in market concentration because a startup who can't hire in an industry without negotiating with a huge existing union is put at a disadvantage relative to large incumbents, and the incumbents may like it that way.
| where they would each be with the other system.
This is such a multi-variable hypothetical that I don't consider it worth discussing.
But that's just saying there's no practical way to get the answer from empirical evidence (too many confounders) and we're stuck with theorizing.
Basically.