Locobot

Very true, but very similar situations do play out in the free market. If that was a workplace run by a decent union you can be sure that a rep would be demanding pay for people like Mars be higher than for the incompetent desk weight of a manager.

Military in the Netherlands are allowed to collectively bargain their contracts (No, I don't think this is a good idea for the U.S. military for all the obvious reasons).

The focus of this thread so far has been on blue-collar unions which make up the most egregious examples. But as RB pointed out the economy is shifting away from manufacturing and unions need to adapt or die off.

I used to work for the largest union in the U.S., the National Education Association and I can tell you that no one is more responsible for maintaining standards for teachers and education. Payscales for teachers are based on seniority but there's a big difference between a first year and a third year teacher. Also there are a lot of new teachers do it for a few weeks or a semester and decide it's not for them. Yeah, we represented some major fuckups but that typically only involved explaining to them why they weren't going to be teachers anymore. Union lawyers will plea bargain in court if it comes to that. However there are 13 year old kids who will lie and not give a shit about getting a teacher fired. There are teachers who opt out of the union and don't pay dues but principals and superintendents are well aware of who they are...they tend to not get raises or benefits and are the first to get pushed around. Several times we would have non-union teachers ask if they could use our lawyers or representatives once they got into trouble .

The movement in the U.S. is towards non-union charter and private schools. Don't get me started about No Child Left Behind. I think Obama's move to change the rules for unionization are a good idea because they will make it easier for those schools to join the union when they need to (most will eventually).