> We know striking works. By standing up and going on strike for $15/hr and union rights we won $70 billion in raises for 24 million people across the country — more than 30 percent of the nation’s workforce.
> The campaign marks just how influential Fight for 15 has become since it formed in 2012. Working in partnership with SEIU and other advocacy groups, its workers have helped drive minimum wage increases in multiple states...
Also, your contrarian thinking seems to carry the assumption that the union organizations are somehow independent of their membership and are more interested in the organization's selfish interests than the achievement of its goals, which I think is generally not true. If that was true, I think you'd need a situation where the union was both 1) a monopoly and 2) undemocratic, because union members are basically customers of their union, and those are the conditions an organization needs to exploit its customers.
I also know few instances where worker unions negotiated better benefits, wages for existing members while letting employer hire new employees at lower wages as a compromise.
> That is probably why other union leaders, like the SEIU’s Mary Kay Henry and Association of Flight Attendants-CWA’s Sara Nelson, support Medicare for All. The advocacy group Labor for Single Payer lists 21 unions who support it. But the controversy lingers, kept alive in part by politicians who oppose Medicare For All.
It's not always very clear whether one healthcare plan would be better than another, especially when the details haven't actually been worked out for the replacement. It sounds like the Culinary Workers Union has built an impressive healthcare system, and wants to be sure their members don't have their healthcare downgraded under a new plan.
Increased wages are much more clear cut. It's not like union employees making $30/hr are going to get their wages reset to the minimum because that was increased to $15/hr.
> I also know few instances where worker unions negotiated better benefits, wages for existing members while letting employer hire new employees at lower wages as a compromise.
And that's likely because those unions were in weak negotiating positions, not because (like you were originally proposing) they wanted to stand in the way of better worker benefits to make themselves more attractive in comparison. IIRC, those lower-paid new hires are also represented by the same union.
> We know striking works. By standing up and going on strike for $15/hr and union rights we won $70 billion in raises for 24 million people across the country — more than 30 percent of the nation’s workforce.
It also partners with major unions: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/fight-for-15-teams-u...:
> The campaign marks just how influential Fight for 15 has become since it formed in 2012. Working in partnership with SEIU and other advocacy groups, its workers have helped drive minimum wage increases in multiple states...
Also, your contrarian thinking seems to carry the assumption that the union organizations are somehow independent of their membership and are more interested in the organization's selfish interests than the achievement of its goals, which I think is generally not true. If that was true, I think you'd need a situation where the union was both 1) a monopoly and 2) undemocratic, because union members are basically customers of their union, and those are the conditions an organization needs to exploit its customers.