DEBATENATE

Topics / Economy

The challenge

“Unions are always good for workers”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

Always is the word that sinks you. Unions have won real things for workers. They've also locked workers out. Seniority rules protect the guy who's been there longest over the guy who's best, and the young worker waits outside. Government unions don't bargain against an owner. They bargain against the taxpayer, and they help elect the people across the table. Franklin Roosevelt wrote in nineteen thirty-seven that collective bargaining as usually understood couldn't be transplanted into public service. And in Janus the Supreme Court ruled that forcing government workers to pay a union violates their free speech. You'll say union members earn more. On average they do. That does nothing for the worker who never got hired. Let me ask you this: if unions are always good, why would anybody have to be forced to pay one? Solidarity should be an offer, not a mandate.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

  1. A worker should decide for himself whether a union speaks for him. Forced dues take that decision away.

    In Janus v. AFSCME, the Supreme Court held that requiring public employees to pay agency fees to a union violates the First Amendment.

  2. Government unions are different. The other side of the table is the voter and the taxpayer, and the union helps elect the officials it bargains with.

    In a 1937 letter, President Franklin Roosevelt, a friend of organized labor, wrote that collective bargaining as usually understood could not be transplanted into the public service.

  3. Most private-sector workers today aren't in a union. The system has to work for them too, not only for members.

    The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the union membership rate was nine point nine percent in 2024, and only about six percent in the private sector.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: Union members earn more than nonunion workers, so unions clearly make workers better off.

Nate: On average they do, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics says so. But the average hides who pays: the worker locked out by seniority, the taxpayer covering public contracts, the newcomer who can't get hired. Good for some workers is not always good for workers.

What he grants the other side

Unions have won higher pay and safer workplaces for a lot of workers.

The lines

Sources

  1. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Union Members, 2024 (2025)
  2. Supreme Court of the United States, Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31 (2018)
  3. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Letter to Luther C. Steward, President of the National Federation of Federal Employees (1937)

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