The person I responded to said "good employees" are inhibited in "growth and innovation" whenever they belong to a union. A single counter-example, of good employees with talent and innovation, reaping tremendous personal rewards, is enough to falsify that statement. I gave several such examples.
On the other hand you have retail workers and food service workers, who are largely not unionized. So what can we blame their low pay and status on?
Talent and genius and innovative ideas being rewarded (or not) is largely orthogonal to union membership. It is a factor of demand and supply, and prevailing profit margins in that industry. That is all.
Detroit declined because factory workers are more fungible than movie stars. Their unions didn't pay attention to the threat of foreign labor or competition by superior foreign firms. Their management also became complacent about competition and chose to blame it on unions.
Germany is very famously pro-union and boasts a strong auto industry. What did they do differently?
The German auto industry is slowly dying. It has been steadily laying off employees and cutting wages. Unionization has done nothing to prevent this. They are not cost competitive with China in terms of labor, energy, and batteries.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz6pzwj6qq7o
> The German auto industry is slowly dying
Like the American auto industry, and also the Japanese, they've been asleep at the wheel as EVs eat their lunch. For a long time it was quite strong though.
> It has been steadily laying off employees and cutting wages. Unionization has done nothing to prevent this
It can't. Unionization can't raise wages and it can't lower wages. It can provide job and wage stability. It can ensure non-union workers are laid off first. But if there's no money or the industry is doing poorly it's a management or international trade issue.
no you don't get it, the unions are going to tamp down on all the incredibly innovative ideas the Uber drivers are coming up with.
Mostly mine seem to innovate new ways to fail at hiding that they've been smoking in the car...
Germany is very famously pro-union and boasts a strong auto industry. What did they do differently
The German auto industry is in a world of shit, actually, but I don't think they can blame the unions for that. Their "works council" model is very different from a typical UAW stronghold in the US. The unions (and in many cases the state itself) are active partners in corporate ownership and management, so they have a stronger incentive not to kill the golden goose.
That's a more reasonable take than the person I responded to. They had the lazy anti-union talking points of "they take your dues and you stay poor". Which must be straight out of a Pinkerton handbook from the 1910s or something.