> Employees can also vote with their feet, if they don't like their bosses, they can leave.

That's an absurd take because your boss suffers no consequences and you do.

It's not about fair, it's about exercising the power you have.

Besides, each part of the country is someone's property, but government gives you a say anyways. I would counter that the equivalent would be saying "why should anyone vote? why bother changing things? if you don't like your country why don't you go find a different one." We don't tend to accept that argument in government, why accept it in private enterprise?

If your boss suffers no consequences if you leave, then your job is superfluous and you should leave, or your boss should be allowed to fire you.

Exercising one's power - sure, employees can do that, and I support that. I just don't think they should deserve special protections and rights for doing that.

If I had an employee and they would tell me "I think your management is shit and I want to make the rules now", I would like to be allowed to fire them.

I didn't say they shouldn't be allowed to fire me, I didn't mean to imply that they would suffer no consequences however the consequences of 100% of my income is way smaller than whatever tiny fraction I make up of a 50,000 person company.

Did you consider your management may be shit and maybe the person should make the rules now, not you? If you were harassing them, for instance, or bullying them, they may have a point and your single point of control over the enterprise may be harmful not just to the worker but to the company.

Just because you would like to fire them doesn't mean you should, as after all, the fiduciary duty is to the company and not to you personally.

That is specifically the value that the union would provide in this case.

Sure, management can be shit, but then the company should simply go to ruins. Likewise, employee decisions can be bad, too. It's mostly magical thinking to assume with unionized employees there will be better decision making.

If I had a company, I would like to have the right to make bad decisions. And who defines good and bad decisions.

With unions, in the end you have courts decide on economic decisions. That's bullshit.

Employee decisions aren't necessarily right, but who's to say that management should deserve unilateral power to make their decisions with maybe the board reining it in. And in tech specifically, we've been seeing more companies where the founders/existing leadership retains enough of a share that they can ignore the board, never mind their employees.

Unilateral control over a business's destiny can doom it if the leadership is making poor decisions even when the rank-and-file oppose them. It's all easy to say the company should simply go to ruins but why should it? What if the good or service is solid, should the customers and the market suffer because the failing company has deprived them of it? Should the workers be punished because they had insufficient leverage to oppose those decisions? Should a ton of money and effort be wasted for an apparently pointless enterprise? If we live in a society that seeks to maximize life expectancy, and if corporations are people, why should we not seek also to prevent avoidable business failures, at least for those enterprises that are building useful products?

Fiduciary duty is to the business not to the leadership, and to replace bad management. An employee-backed check bolsters this fiduciary duty.

> If I had a company, I would like to have the right to make bad decisions. And who defines good and bad decisions.

Feel free to do that in a company of 1. As soon as your company exceeds 1 person, you lose the absolute right. You lose the right when your decisions impact the livelihood of those around you. It doesn't drop to zero instantly but it is attenuated as the company grows.

Why do I lose that right? Back to the example of your kitchen: you hire somebody to redo your kitchen. Why would they have a say in how you want to have your kitchen redone?

If you work for a company and you feel they are making bad decisions and perhaps your job is in peril (because the company may go down), it is high time to look for a new job.

And again, who then decides what is or is not a bad decision? Courts will get to decide on economic decisions. But lawyers have studied law, not economics. How does that make sense?

That should be pretty obvious to you.

Someone you hire to redo your kitchen isn't employed by you, they're employed by their employer, where everything we talked about makes sense. That's why there's a distinction between an employer-employee relationship and a contracting relationship.

They of course get a say in how your kitchen is done: if it's not up to code, or dangerous, they absolutely have a say. And frequently. When I redid my kitchen my GC pointed out all these things to me and modified I my plans.

> If you work for a company and you feel they are making bad decisions and perhaps your job is in peril (because the company may go down), it is high time to look for a new job.

You're re-stating how it is today, but there's no reason it need to be this way, and it fails to meet the fiduciary duty to the company and its shareholders.

> And again, who then decides what is or is not a bad decision? Courts will get to decide on economic decisions. But lawyers have studied law, not economics. How does that make sense?

You don't need a law degree to know harassment is wrong. In fact mandatory training is part of your, wait for it, fiduciary duty. You don't need a degree to recognize bad management.

Somebody doing your kitchen doesn't have to be employed by somebody else. They can simply have a contract with you. You pay them x in exchange for them going y in your kitchen.

Of course they can have opinions or refuse to do things in certain ways. But they can't force you to have a pink wall color, or other things. At most, perhaps if the see something dangerous or illegal in your kitchen, they may have a duty to do something about it.

Likewise, an employee can refuse to do things by simply quitting the job.

Harassment: again, quit your job, apart from that, general laws about harassment should apply, independent from you being an employee or not.

"fiduciary duty" - where does that come from? Why does somebody suddenly have a duty to take care of you? I am self employed. Why do you get people to have the duty to take care of you, but I don't? Who should have the duty to take care of me?

Suppose you pay me to renovate your kitchen.

Now what is your duty towards me? Is it now your duty to see that I earn a living wage and have job security forever? All just because you simply wanted a new wall color in your kitchen?

Their employer isn't you, it's themselves. You have hired them in their sole proprietorship capacity.

> Of course they can have opinions or refuse to do things in certain ways. But they can't force you to have a pink wall color, or other things. At most, perhaps if the see something dangerous or illegal in your kitchen, they may have a duty to do something about it.

You're not their employer, you're contracting their employer.

> Harassment: again, quit your job, apart from that, general laws about harassment should apply, independent from you being an employee or not.

No thanks, that's an objectively worse world.

> Why do you get people to have the duty to take care of you, but I don't? Who should have the duty to take care of me?

Because that's what running a business is. Since you're self employed you have that responsibility to look after yourself.

> Now what is your duty towards me? Is it now your duty to see that I earn a living wage and have job security forever? All just because you simply wanted a new wall color in your kitchen?

Nope, that's their employers duty.