Comment by snapplebobapple

You really have to look at this stuff from first principles and first principles are pretty clear. Unions by definition are exercising market power to withhold labor and force a higher than market price on said labor. Thus, they are causing dead weight loss to society and making everyone worse off in the base case. Then one has to ask themselves in which situations could a union pushing up labor prices make things better? There's basically only one situation and that is where there is a labor monopsony and the company holding the monopsony is pushing labor prices down below market clearing rates (because pushing prices higher gets us closer to the market clearing rate in theory, lowering dead weight loss from labor). Is this a monopsony? Yes, it kind of is, but when one looks at the contracts being offered it's really hard to say labour prices are being pushed below market clearing rates. If anything they have been and continue to pay a premium, so this is not a situation where a union is a good idea for society.