[jhundal]

At some point the majority of workers voted to organize. After that, anyone working there has made the choice to work a unionized job. I don't think it is fair to allow a single jobseeker to break the structure of a union this way. Why not consider asking these individuals to choose to work a different job if they object to paying union dues?

In general, there's an information asymmetry between workers and employers that collective bargaining presumably helps alleviate (especially in the private sector), and union advocates would say that the value of this outweighs the drawbacks of unions. That's the right question to be debating rather than the fairness of closed shops.

[pitaj]

If the employer agrees that everyone should join a union, sure. Public sector unions are an entirely different beast though.

[exabrial]

> I don't think it is fair to allow a single jobseeker to break the structure of a union this way

So it's fair to force them to put part of their paycheck towards something they have no interest in using? That's neither ethical nor fair.

[jhundal]

EDIT: To try to keep the discussion focused, and the level of discourse high, let's try to find out exactly where we disagree:

You asked: Why is ethical or fair force a worker to pay union dues as part of a job?

My answer: Because the union's negotiation affects all employees it is ethical and fair to ask every employee to contribute. Allowing every employee to opt out greatly reduces the amount of resources the union has available to reach its aims.

The assumptions behind my answer:

- That the negotiation performed by the union does affect all workers in the job, whether union members or not.

- That collective bargaining enabled by unions can in many cases be a positive thing for workers.

- That right-to-work laws do indeed adversely affect the resources of a union. (The data shows that public sector union membership greatly dropped after Wisconsin's public sector right-to-work act passed: https://projects.jsonline.com/news/2016/11/27/for-unions-in-...)

Let's move this debate forward: Which part of my response/assumptions do you disagree with, and why?

(Aside: I'm actually not the biggest fan of public sector unions, but I think it's likely private sector laws would have a similar effect.)

(Original comment preserved below.)

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The union asks for that contribution because they are negotiating for all employees, and no one can claim that they'd negotiate themselves because the union has fought for the baseline. If the union has won the right to require that contribution for all workers, what is the issue with this requirement? Again, why try to debate whether the employee should have this choice when they had the initial choice to work a different job?

That said, I think that the right-to-work debate is a red herring. The first question we need to answer is whether collective bargaining can be a net benefit, and if so, how we can make it work.

Stepping back even further, I think folks tend to forget that model of an optimal free market carries several assumptions, perfect information being the one most notably broken by a large employer to single employee relationship. That doesn't mean that free market model isn't useful, in fact we should be trying to aim for the results of a perfect free market in most cases. But it does mean that there can be areas where a bit of intervention does a huge amount of good.