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I have worked in both union and non union shops, the benefits have been equal in both shops.
... the reason this is true is because union shops exist that have full or near-full membership of employees. But, I doubt it's true. I've done comparisons, and I've never found it to be the case if you go one layer below what the HR benefit summary says. The details tell a different story.
It's not hard to see this in action if you pay attention to the right industries, that is, those where unions still exist.
I worked for a time in an industry where unions still pull a lot of weight, but my particular company wasn't unionized. We were in direct competition with another company that is unionized. During orientation and forever thereafter at regular intervals, we were given the propaganda about why we shouldn't attempt to join a union, citing all sorts of "evidence" about how our benefits were better than the competition ... (then comes the fine print) even though our wages are lower.
Now, they tried to explain that away by saying they could hire more people because wages were lower, and it kept us "competitive." The reality was that, adjusted for gross revenue and customer base comparisons, our employment rates were close to equal. We employed more salespeople but fewer technicians, which is interesting because the technicians are the ones with the competitor who were the primary source of union membership. As for the benefits, that was simply a lie. On a thin sheet of paper was the "fact" we had more insurance options, a profit-sharing package, etc.
Well, the profit-sharing package didn't kick in for 10 years, and you would lose your investment in total if you did something silly like invoke FMLA ... or if the company sold your particular piece of the company or outsourced it. In these situations you remained employed and tied to the parent company but were no longer employed *by* it. I saw this happen three times in four years. It was a regular thing. Further, while we had more "options" for insurance, none of them were as broad in their coverage as the only option of the competitor.
And, as I said, wages were lower.
All that said, the number one thing to take away from this is the effort the company put in preventing employees from unionizing by attempting to compare us to a shop that was unionized. Without that unionized shop, none of these basic attempts to remain competitive in the employment market would have been considered.
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