An important issue in politics, especially Swedish politics and especially Leftist politics, is that of (trade) unions. For the time being, however, I will have comparatively little to say on that issue relative “party politics” (for want of a better phrase), various activist and/or hate movements, issues with suppression of civic rights, whatnot, and I will mostly confine myself to the single, more survey-style and highly incomplete, treatment on this page. The reason is that unions are too often a poor fit within the regular party systems and are not always so much idealistic and ideological as egoistical and pragmatic, and as the main damage done by unions is through factors like being a hindrance to the functioning of the economy and market forces, the damage done to travelers, and similar. Indeed, the fit is sufficiently poor that I was a little hesitant about putting this page in the category Politics. Unions are also less influential in many or most countries than they were in the past.
Why travelers? Surprising as this might be to future readers, there is currently, in 2024, and in the years leading up to now, a massive issue with strikes in the transportation sector, especially around airlines/airports and train companies, and in a manner that does massive damage to third parties, including innocent passengers. The problems have been particularly large in Germany, where I live and where it is currently justified to speak of an outright threat to the overall economy (already weakened by many years of political mismanagement, the COVID-countermeasure era, politician-created inflation, and an unnecessary energy crisis).
My recollections of the somewhat more distant past does not contain this problem, however, and chances are that things will improve again.
Also see some of the below discussion.
In a bigger picture, we have to differ between unions-as-they-are and unions more generally. Below, I deal almost exclusively with unions-as-they-are. While my implicit conclusion is that unions-as-they-are are a net evil in this world, and by a large margin, I do not necessarily extend this to the general case. It could certainly be that some sufficiently idealistic, well informed, competent, cooperative, whatnot, union would be a net good.
A particular complication with unions and their treatment in politics is the widely varying politicization, ideology, whatnot, of unions. They range, be it nominally or in actuality, from the strongly ideological (e.g. syndicalists) to purely pragmatic member organizations, from genuine member organizations to covers for or allies with organised crime (especially, in the historical U.S.), from genuine member organizations to vehicles for the personal success or personal agendas of the leaders, from the organizationally independent to extreme intermingling with some political party (note Sweden below), etc.
(Some sub-topics will recur below.)
The Swedish Left was, for most of the 20th century, dominated by the dual and intermingled forces of the Social-Democrat party (SAP) and LO, an umbrella organization that covers most of the Swedish blue-collar unions.
A particular evil, until 1991, was “kollektivanslutningen”—the collective and automatic enrollment of all covered union members as members in SAP. This severely reduced political freedom and provided SAP with a considerable artificial inflow of money. It was, then, hard or impossible to be a union member without supporting SAP, even for those whose politics went in another direction. (But the Swedish Left was strongly Marxist and it might often have been assumed that no worker could or should have any other political stance than what, in a Marxist framework, was prescribed by class—ergo, the workers were only forced to act the way that they “should” voluntarily have done.) The matter was made worse by strong union rhetoric that those not in the unions were freeloaders, who received the “benefits” that unions fought for without paying their dues. which could make life hard for independent workers. (This is largely a crock of shit, of course, as unions often do more harm than good. Cf. below.)
In a next step, there was a massive problem with LO influence on the politics of the SAP, as this aid needed a payment. A particular atrocity was “Löntagarfonderna”, largely pushed through by LO against resistance from SAP. This scheme amounted to a socialization/collectivization through the backdoor, by using the profits earned by a business to buy shares in that business in the name of a worker/union controlled fund. Fortunately, the actual implementation was watered down and the life of this atrocity approximately limited to the 1980s. Even so, great harm was done and great controversy caused.
(The list of various misdevelopments in the Swedish labor markets is very long. The image projected, at least in Sweden, of a great success of cooperation and whatnot, was very wrong.)
A private, but off-topic, annoyance is the way that Swedish unions have begun to use occupational designators as proper names for themselves, e.g. in that the painters’ union presumptuously and all-inconclusively refers to it self as “The Painters” (“Målarna”). The worst of the worst, a truly inexcusable abuse of this idea, is “The Leaders” (“Ledarna”), which seems to mostly organize middle-managers. Even “The Bosses” (“Cheferna”) would have been bad—but “The Leaders”?!?!?
(The U.S. “Teamsters”, mentioned below, might follow a similar idea.)
The U.S., at least, has a long history of ties between unions and organized crime, and (in stark contrast to Sweden) less to politics. This, especially, with the notorious “Teamsters”. Reading up on Jimmy Hoffa and his period in charge is quite illuminating. (Note: Reading. Movies like “The Irishman” might give the right big-picture impression, and were my original motivation to read up, but must be taken with a grain or two of salt even when it comes to the non-speculative parts.)
While the ties to “proper” politics are weak, there is a history of political graft and influencing, in the mutual-back-scratching family. The idea of vote buying might be more explicit than in e.g. Sweden and Germany, and the U.S. does have a long history of corrupt politics, often based on controlling specific voter blocks, as with “Tammany Hall”.
Many issues with unions arise through the use of highly unfair methods. (Even aside from e.g. problems for customers and with disrupted market forces.)
The idea that unions would have the “right” to enforce their strikes and other actions onto non-members, to prevent others from working, is inexcusable. Ditto the “right” to block customers from entering premisses. Ditto the “right” to block access for in-coming or out-going deliveries. Etc. This type of disturbance of business goes well beyond what can reasonably be considered compatible with even a right to strike—it is no longer a matter of “Give me more money [less hours, or whatnot] or I won’t work!” but of “[...] or I will sabotage your business!”. This is not one iota better than, say, a protection racket.
Likewise, even non-blocking protests can do considerable harm in an unjustifiable manner. For instance, marching around with placards while shouting slogans outside a place of business can negatively affect the work inside the building and make customers scratch an intended visit.
Particular absurdities include sympathy strikes and the German “Warnstreiks” (“warning strikes”). To the latter: Instead of a “proper” strike, with full declarations of a striking state, the (in Germany) necessary union-wide vote (“Urabstimmung”), whatnot, this gives the union leadership the ability to stop work for a shorter period (say, a single day)—and to do so on a very short notice. This, in the end, is nothing but a harassment of the employer and, arguably, one that is more damaging than a shorter regular strike, as the employer’s ability to adapt to the circumstances is reduced. They are certainly more damaging to third parties, e.g., in recent times, train passengers. (And note how train passengers suffer from the same low ability to react and adapt in time.) Apart from, extremely unfortunately, being legal, these warning strikes have more in common with wildcat strikes than with proper strikes.
Even the idea of a strike, as such, is highly dubious in today’s world and even in a system of collective bargaining. A justification might well have been present in older days or, today, in exceptional circumstances, e.g. should an unconscionable health or safety issue be present. For normal bargaining, however, it shifts too much power to the unions. In a sane system of collective bargaining, we would have statements like “We want X percent more money—or we all look for jobs elsewhere!”. What we do have is “[...]—or we go on a strike!”. (Note the asymmetry with individual workers who try to negotiate: Why should unions have access to bargaining tools that are not available to individual workers?)
(Some words on “closed shops” and other related topics follow below.)
A recurring problem with organizations is that they often leave their ostensible purpose behind in order to become tools for the purposes of their leaders, often in a highly corrupt manner, often in a manner directly damaging to those whom they truly should serve. The world of sports is filled with examples; unions are another, very common source of examples. (I first remarked on this problem with regard to the likes of FIFA, long before the 2015 scandal, UEFA, IAAF, etc.; hence, the label.)
At the end of the day, there is no guarantee that a union actually tries to work for the best of its members. (And when it does it is not necessarily successful or is only successful at the cost of others. Cf. the discussions of monopolies and Economics below.)
A potentially interesting example is the German GDL, responsible for most of the aforementioned train strikes. I have heard claimed (but do not vouch for the correctness) that the true motivation is an internal struggle with another train-centric union. In effect, some side-effect of the strikes, be it actual success, mere publicity, or something else, would help GDL extend its dominance and reduce competing unions to unimportance. (With reservations for my understanding: collective bargaining only take place between the German Railways and the single largest union in any given sub-field or within any given subsidiary, which makes it important for power-hungry union leaders to reach that “largest” everywhere that they can.)
A complete lack of concern for the interests of third parties is often manifest, as with e.g. the repeated cases of traffic strikes in Germany or (around the time of writing) strikes in the British NHS. There seems to be no understanding that others are hurt and, very interestingly, that these others might now view the unions in a negative light.
In some cases, I would go as far as suspect that the unions deliberately attempt to damage the reputation of the respective employer. These attempts, however, often backfire and result in a damaged reputation for the respective union—to the point that even many who (usually, ill-advisedly) sympathized with the union at the beginning of a conflict no longer do so at the end.
Common issues include various forms of monopolies, monopoly-like situations, and other restrictions on competition. The unethical attempts to block others from working during a strike (cf. above) are a good example. Other cases include e.g. attempts to form “closed shops” that only allow union members to be hired and absurd regulations of the “Only we janitors are allowed to change light-bulbs!” kind. Generally, unions very often work on an insider–outsider basis, be it with regard to membership or employment, so that the insiders have something of a monopoly and profit at the cost of the outsiders.
In another direction, collective bargaining through unions often implies a bargaining monopoly, which limits the flexibility of the employed, who usually have little choice but to accept the union-negotiated rates. This implies that someone highly competent and valued-by-the-employer cannot use his good standing to bargain for a higher remuneration than the lazy and incompetent. Likewise, it implies that a young applicant looking for his first position cannot get a foot in the door through a lower initial remuneration (beyond what might arise based on age, experience, or similar within a union-negotiated pay scale). Ditto someone fresh out of jail and viewed with scepticism by prospective employers. Ditto the housewife coming back to work after two decades of raising children. Etc.
Then we have the type of bottleneck-control exerted by many unions or groups of employees and the resulting leverage. Consider air travel and the security checks: The security checks are a low-value activity, are performed by low-level grunts, and are dwarfed by the actual flight in terms of importance to the journey. However, if the security checkers go on strike, the entire chain of air travel is blocked, giving them an enormous leverage. This especially as a block of air traffic will have considerable side-effects on other fields.
Such issues are made the worse when more than one group can block the chain. For instance, air travel can be severely hampered by a strike not just around security checks but also by a pilot’s strike, a strike among “cabin personnel”, a strike around check-ins, a strike among baggage handlers, etc. Moreover, just like blocked air traffic can hamper other fields, other fields can hamper air traffic. If the trains do not run, for instance, some airports are harder to reach or require some passengers to pick other means of transport than on a normal day, which has a negative effect on access to flights, the (already depressingly low) comfort of air travel, etc.
These groups often have separate employers and/or belong to separate unions, do not necessarily have any great concern or sympathy for each other (let alone customers/passengers/whatnot), and can have outright clashing interests. For instance, if the one group of employees in a given company receives a raise, this cuts into the money available for raises to other groups.
Of course, if the one group is successful through striking, the next might assume that it too will be successful, which increases the risk of further strikes.
Such bottlenecks often, however, also have elements of disadvantage to the unions through (a) a non-transfer of business to the employer’s competition, and (b) an injured reputation caused by the increased damage to the public and innocent third parties (and strikes here are the more despicable because of that damage). Consider e.g. a strike directed at a particular grocery store (or store chain): Most customers will have other grocery stores within a conscionable distance of their homes/offices/routes/whatnot—and often several. If they find one store closed due to a strike, they simply go to the next, they suffer very few disadvantages, and the custom that would have gone to the original store is moved to a competing store, which favors the stores competition at the cost of the store, which, in turn, gives the store incentives to negotiate. In contrast, if the security checkers at an airport are on strike, customers have nowhere else to go, because they cannot go to an alternative security check at the same airport and because re-booking to use another airport is hardly ever practical or conscionable—even assuming that the security checkers at the other airport are not also on strike.
Here we see another potential downside of collective bargaining: If the scope of bargaining is too large (e.g. covering an entire field of business, as opposed to individual companies within that field), the situation can artificially be moved from the equivalent of a strike in a grocery store to the equivalent of a strike among security checkers in an airport.
This could give some ideas on how to diminish the problems with e.g. airports: Give airlines the choice between using airport security for checks and having their own security checks. (The latter might be both cost effective and otherwise attractive for airlines with a large volume at a given airport.) Strikes would now be more limited in scope and less damaging to travelers and society through being a matter of union vs. airline, instead of union vs. airport. For an individual traveler to rebook in the short term might still not be viable in many cases, but there would certainly be much more flexibility even in the mid term, and even the short term flexibility is certainly improved in some cases.
There would be additional complications in terms of sending passengers to the right security checks; however, these might be offset by a more effective and efficient handling, as the airlines now have incentives to keep checks flowing in a way that airports do not have. It might even be possible to combine check-in and baggage handover with a security check in a one-stop manner, which could streamline the process considerably, while avoiding any risk of going to the wrong check. Moreover, even today, larger airports often have more than one set of security checkpoints in order to cover different terminals and/or other subdivisions of the airport, implying that passengers already have some burden of coordination.
(The above, however, should be seen more as an interesting idea than as a concrete suggestion. Security checks are, in particular, just an illustration of a more general idea and any actual implementation would require a far deeper analysis of problems and opportunities.)
The influence of unions on Economics is an extremely wide field. To give just a few of the most common major issues in a highly abbreviated form:
Not every issue will necessarily occur everywhere, as union methods and attitudes vary somewhat. Resistance against technological progress (cf. below) might be an item with particularly many exceptions.
I have not attempted to draw a border between what is caused by collective bargaining and what by unions, per se. This, in part, because they tend to go hand in hand; in part, because the effects are often partially from both. I have also not made an attempt to differ between unions as they almost invariably tend to be/behave and how they could be.
Unions reduce the effect of market forces, which, in turn and among other things, reduces overall growth. This especially when it comes to allocation of resources (e.g. who works where).
From a more business point of view, unions often lower the profits of their employers, which can, depending on the situation, prevent expansion, lead to unnecessary bankruptcy, or similar. In the long term, this can be a strong net-negative for the union members, themselves.
(This item is sufficiently generic that it contains at least portions of each of the other items.)
Unions serve insiders at the cost of outsiders (also see elsewhere). A particular common issue is that higher remuneration for the insiders is bought at the cost of higher unemployment among the outsiders.
Some truly egregious examples can be found among U.S. longshoremen, who sometimes earn several times what equivalent workers elsewhere receive—and do so through union power and restrictions.
With industry-wide bargaining, as is common in e.g. Sweden, a similar effect to the previous item can result in very different outcomes from company to company and worker to worker: In companies that are sufficiently successful, the workers now earn more; in companies that are not, the workers end up unemployed, because the employer cannot carry the extra cost and goes bankrupt. (With some intermediate cases, where some workers are kept on, earning more, and others are let go to cut costs.)
Absurdly, this was partially a deliberate Swedish governmental/Social-Democrat strategy for portions of the 20th century. I have never quite understood the reasoning behind this strategy, but I do suspect a hidden motivation of simply concentrating industry and whatnot in fewer hands in order to make governmental and/or union control that much easier. This, maybe, in particular, with an eye at an easier future socialization.
While this strategy predates the aforementioned Löntagarfonder[na], there is an interesting potential interplay with an eye at (quasi-)socialization, in that less profitable companies might go bankrupt, while more profitable grow even more profitable, through the reduction in competition, which would increase the rate of takeover by Löntagarfonderna. Heads, you go bankrupt; tails, your business is socialized.
Unions distort or remove incentives in various directions, e.g. through preventing performance-based remunerations.
Unions can lead to wasteful employment, e.g. in that the incompetent cannot be fired or in that union rules force the performance of easy tasks of a certain character by someone in a specific group (e.g., again, in that only a janitor may change a light-bulb).
Overlapping with the previous item, unions often bring about a lowering of competence (and/or bring unfairness relative individual workers). For instance, a common problem in Sweden was a last-in-first-out approach to layoffs: if layoffs were needed, the last hired, even if highly competent and hard-working, were let go first, while even the incompetent and lazy were protected, if employed for long enough.
Unions hinder technological progress through a Luddite mentality.
A particularly interesting case is the U.K. Wapping dispute in the 1980s. Here the printers’ union tried to prevent computer technology that allowed journalists to create printable text without manual type setting—something already, at the time, widespread outside the U.K. and an absolute given by the 1990s.
The problems with political unions are not limited to Sweden (cf. above), and it is not uncommon for unions to e.g. make donations to parties/candidates/causes/whatnot using money that ultimately comes from membership fees—even when some or many of the members might disapprove of the recipients. The workers, then, have the choice between not being union members and seeing their money go where it does not belong or, even, where it acts against the best interests of the members. Worse, there are jurisdictions where non-members are still forced to pay money to the union based on the (largely fictional) claim that they would otherwise be freeloaders—and the money might still be used for purposes contrary to the wishes of the paying non-members.
A law to prevent unions from engaging in politics would be an interesting idea, but one hard to push through and enforce, and also somewhat concerning from a “freedom of association” point of view. (It would also be a historical oddity, seeing how unions and the union movement often began in a political context.)
A more restricted take, however, might be possible and even outright recommendable, in that (a) member fees underlie considerable restrictions in use, (b) no quasi-monopolistic union (say, one that is the sole representative in a certain “shop”) may be politically active.
(Even in the last case, however, some leeway might be needed. For instance, lobbying for a worker-safety improvement might be allowed even while giving donations to a particular candidate is illegal.)
There are a great many positive things that unions could do, but which often are viewed as secondary or are entirely neglected. Better unions could focus on (relative the employers) issues like preventing mistreatment of individual employees, safety standards and ergonomy, whatnot, and (relative the members) educational opportunities, counseling, advice on labor law, etc.
The potential benefits from work on safety standards and ergonomy need not be limited to a specific employer. An excellent example is the TCO monitor standard, which had a considerable worldwide effect, and was created by the Swedish TCO (a more white-collar parallel to the aforementioned and more blue-collar LO).
Vice versa, there are quite a few things that unions could abstain from or do differently. To give concrete examples is trickier in this area, especially as unions are not clones; however, much can be covered on a more abstract level by commonly occurring attitudes-to-be-avoided like short-sightedness, belligerence, technology hostility, and the many points of criticism above, e.g. the lack of concern for third parties.
The union reactions to the 2024 Volkswagen (VW) crisis are a good illustration of several above points:
The company is struggling and the high costs of employment and the lack of flexibility in labor relations in Germany is one of the core reasons. VW now sees it self forced to reduce (in particular) its German operations. What do the unions do? They go on strikes that further damages VW, that further reduce profitability of the German operations, that further prove how large the flexibility issues are, that give further incentives to reduce German operations, etc. (So far, we have the aforementioned “Warnstreiks”. Regular and further strikes seem likely.)
The idea seems to be to extort VW into keeping its German operations as high as possible, which is both short-sighted and self-centered. Indeed, this type of approach gives VW even greater long-term incentives exactly to cut German operations, to avoid future investments in Germany, and to prefer investments elsewhere. Ditto other car makers (and other employers, in general), who might now, e.g., prefer to build the next plant elsewhere in order to not have to go through hell, should the need to close it arise.
But let us say that VW were to keep its operations in Germany as before, while facing the current situation. We might then have scenarios like the company needing extensive government intervention, which means more money taken from the tax-payers, which, in turn, makes everyone else worse off. (And, of course, cuts into the German car market, putting further pressure on the German car industry.) We might have VW cuts being made elsewhere, e.g. in that we now substitute layoffs in another countries for layoffs in Germany. We might have forced increases on the prices of cars, making them less affordable (which, of course, might be something welcomed by certain politicians—but hardly by the VW employees). At an extreme, in the sufficiently long term, we might even have VW going bankrupt.
Certainly, preventing a business from adjusting to changing circumstances, including profitability issues and problems with excessive costs, will hinder its future development. Likewise, in reverse, if a failing business is artificially kept at its current size (in some cases, even alive) this will hinder fitter companies from taking its place through a piece of market being occupied, through an artificially low employment that reduces the chance to gain access to the right workers at the right price, through office space that remains rented and is not available to others, etc.
An interesting question is to what degree labor-market inflexibility has altered the character of the layoffs and other adjustments needed. (Even aside from the fact that they make Germany less attractive as a place of production.) With more flexibility, gradual changes are more likely; with less flexibility, the need to change might simply be kept behind a dam until the dam bursts, with a single burst of much larger change. For the sake of easy numbers, image a business that, in some sense, “should” have laid off 50 workers per year (on average and beyond those who retired or left for other employment) for a range of 10 years. Imagine further that this business has refrained from doing so, in the knowledge that even 50 workers would cause a prolonged conflict with the union, fail on legal obstacles, require disproportionate severance payments, or similar. After those 10 years, the excess burden of 500 workers too much reaches the breaking point and they are all dropped at the same time, causing a far greater splash. (And after having increasingly dragged down profitability over time, making the situation of the business now worse, even after the layoffs, than if a more continual approach had been taken/available.)
The issues of workers, unemployment, the effect of unemployment on labor costs, etc., is interesting in light of the claimed German Fachkräftemangel:
In as far as Germany and/or a specific field/profession/whatnot does have a Fachkräftemangel, the implication would be (a) that those unemployed by layoffs by the one employer would soon be soaked up by someone else, (b) that there already exists a strong upwards pressure on remuneration (and, by implication, labor costs), which makes union actions to drive remuneration up even higher than naturally both unnecessary and harmful.
A deeper analysis of the multiple causes behind the crisis is off-topic and made harder by the intermingling of many factors. Notably, competition from China is a major contributor, but why does Germany have problems competing with China? To a large part, because of higher labor costs. Likewise, lower profits mean less money to put into research (including, of course, research into EV technology). If in doubt, the more problems there is to deal with, the less margin there is to handle yet another problem.
However, it is very noteworthy that government actions have had a great influence, including stiffer regulations on exhausts from explosion motors and a move to EV forced at a higher tempo than technology and the markets can handle.
This type of problem is very long-standing in Germany (and some other parts of the Western world). I recall e.g. my own expectations from the German re-unification in 1990: Germany’s problem with an already very high labor cost would be solved and Germany would emerge stronger than ever. In reality, however, both the government and the unions took an attitude of forcing wages and whatnots in the “East” as close as possible to those in the “West” as soon as possible, destroying this opportunity, causing market disturbances, and, in all likelihood, leaving even the “East” (let alone the “West”) worse off in the long term than if wages had been allowed to develop naturally. Certainly, it made many of the existing “Eastern” businesses so unprofitable that they tanked, now being forced to produce at increasingly “Western” costs while having the same low productivity and product quality as before, while already struggling with other changes.
Another excellent example is how the coal industry has received enormous and undeserved amounts of tax-payers’ money, largely through a misguided fear of unemployment and in violation of sound economics.
A very good example of the dangers of both Warnstreiks and the lack of concern for others is given by the March 2025 situation in Wuppertal. With so little forewarning that residents, building managements, whatnot, could not react and adapt, public employees in garbage collection (among other fields) decided to go on a Warnstreik. Result? The streets of my neighborhood are filled with garbage containers, the garbage containers are filled beyond the brim, there is a problem with stench and overflow, and there is a considerable risk that rats and other unwanted animals are attracted. (And, maybe, other risks and problems beyond that.)
How much of Wuppertal is affected and how badly is hard to say, because different parts of the city have different schedules for garbage collection, both with regard to which day of the week is “collection day” and what type of garbage is collected in what week within a four-week cycle. In my building, for instance, paper is collected every four weeks, food and other containers/packaging/whatnot (“gelbe Tonne”/“gelber Sack”) every two weeks, and other types (“Restmüll”, including various compostables) every week. However, even “just” the “Restmüll” obviously poses a major problem, especially from a sanitary point of view, and chances are that a very sizeable portion of Wuppertal was stuck with a “Restmüll” problem.
(As a disclaimer, the overall German and Wuppertal systems for sorting and disposal of garbage are more complicated—arguably, over-complicated. The above gives the right idea for the limited purposes of this excursion, however.)
A key issue here is that there is not just a service interruption, which could be troublesome enough, but a service interruption on so short notice that garbage containers everywhere in the neighborhood were dragged out of the cellars or backyards, where they usually stand, and put on the streets for collection—and were then left uncollected, causing various sanitary problems and risks well beyond what would have been the case, had they remained in the cellars (to a high degree) resp. backyards (to a lesser degree). To boot, today (Sunday, 2025-03-16) they are still standing on the street, because virtually no-one appears to have put them back—after close to a week (Tuesday, 2025-03-11, was the scheduled “collection day”).
To make matters more complicated, but independent of union misbehavior, there are unclarities around who could, should, and may do what with the containers. In my building, e.g., the (potentially heavy) containers are brought out of the cellar and back again by two small women who work for building management. We now have questions like whether the (by past experiences both incompetent and negligent) building management simply dropped the ball, whether the little women deliberately choose to let the containers stand in the belief that collection was simply delayed or in order to save their backs, whether a return of the containers by residents would amount to a bear service towards the little women, etc. (Not to mention a natural reluctance among the residents to do work that building management is paid to do and, whether deliberately or negligently, directly or indirectly, has failed to do.)
It is interesting, however, that all or almost all houses in the neighborhood seem to have kept the containers on the street, at least as of yesterday (Saturday, 2025-03-15) when I last was outside.
Imagine, in contrast, if there had been a one-week notice, with formal notification to the respective building management of the various buildings and/or a notice posted on each affected door, to the effect of “From the xth to the yth, there will be a strike. Please do not put garbage containers on the street during this time. Please consider reducing your garbage production in the week leading up to the strike.” or similar.
Likewise, with a longer run-up, the collection company would have had the option to, to some degree, reschedule, hire temporary replacements, and to otherwise mitigate the damage. This, however, I increasingly suspect, is the true reason for why German unions love Warnstreiks: Unlike a proper strike, they do not give the respective employer time to adapt in various ways, which makes them more damaging than a regular strike of the same extent and duration—potentially, even, more damaging than a regular strike of a considerably longer duration. (And never mind the increased damage to innocent third parties.) This is the more perfidious as the ostensible purpose of a Warnstreik is to warn (“warnen”), to prove that the union at hand is serious about the matter, and similar. In reality, however, it is a very heavy-handed approach, which has the one saving grace that it is shorter than most regular strikes. But, then, this very partial saving grace is often undone again by the use of repeated Warnstreiks in a short time. Warnstreiks need to be banned by law—period. (Consider, by analogy, a business negotiation where the one party to the negotiations, without risk of retaliation, had the right to punch the other party in the nose once every twenty minutes—and with the justification that the punches would just prove how serious he was and how this would be a lesser evil than if he just walked away from the deal being negotiated.)
From another angle, there are certain professions, fields of service, and similar, where a service interruption causes so much damage that restrictions in the right to strike, more generally, might be needed. Garbage collection is likely an example. More generally, it could be argued that any monopoly of such a kind that the end customers/users/whatnot have no conscionable means of going elsewhere in a sufficiently short time frame are examples (and garbage collection is, in turn, an example of such a monopoly).
Exactly what these restrictions would be, I leave unstated, as this is a tricky question where I have not put in much prior thought, and as the correct answer for the one profession/field/whatnot need not be correct for another.
I stress, however, that “restrictions” does not automatically imply a complete ban. It might e.g. be that only half the workforce may strike at any given time (allowing more critical work to continue at the cost of less critical), that a longer period of notification before the strike is required than in fields with no restrictions (allowing greater adaption and damage control—especially, for/by third parties), and/or that a strike is viewed as true “last resort” to be used only when negotiations have failed over months—not the type of willy-nilly, because-we-feel-like-it, action that strikes (Warnstreiks, in particular) have become in the hands of many German unions.
Moreover, I stress that the restrictions are assuming that strikes elsewhere remain allowed. As briefly noted earlier, a case can be made that strikes should only be allowed, at all, anywhere, under exceptional circumstances.
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