[dmckeon]

> paying your dues. Its more about that than aptitude it seems to me.

Yes, paying dues, both in the sense of putting in the time to learn the trade well, and very likely for a good paying career in the trade, paying union dues. People have been doing this since the rise of professional guilds in the middle ages.

Today's kids can show aptitude, capability, and interest by doing well in shop class. An employer can take that interested teen or tween on at an entry level, add to their skill level, and make a profit on their labor. The worker can protect their labor value through a union, and probably should if only for the side benefits apart from negotiating contract labor rates.

Should they just go to college instead? Sure, if they have that interest, and can get out without a student loan debt bigger than some mortgages.

[ghaff]

Unions are not magic. I have a friend who did belong to the local sheetmetal workers union and she was... not positive. Moved into a non-union shop and was a lot happier.

[Aurornis]

Similar experience here. Family member went into a union job and discovered that it was great for the old guys at the top who had been there for 3 decades, but it was rather repressive for the new people starting at the bottom. Much easier to pivot into a different job where union seniority wasn’t the defining factor of your entire career.

[easterncalculus]

Sure, but a union is supposed to work better, so if it isn't, by definition it's to some degree corrupted. So it's important to remember that the union itself isn't a bad thing.

A union is supposed to provide for workers in the same way that a software company makes software. If either of them don't, there's something fundamentally corrupt about each org, not with the concept.

[squigz]

In what way was she unhappy?

[ambicapter]

Also, seniority, which you seem to skip over.