No but it would get somewhat better. You also need great education, a respect for science (rather than superstition), political stability, and good infrastructure. Right now that doesn't exist, but unionization could help it along. Fewer warlords would also help.
When Norway’s labor movement started it was a desperately poor country, so poor that roughly half its population had recently emigrated to America. Some scholars think that the capitalist class felt it had to concede a little to labor or it would simply all move away. There’s some evidence for this in the way elites started promoting free education during that time.
I agree with you. For what it's worth, I work at Intel in Oregon. I would be interested in joining a union if that were an option.
I suspect that tech industry work is sufficiently different from most other kinds of work that the optimal union might be somewhat different than unions that currently exist.
Some questions we would need to work out:
What do we want the union to advocate for? Pay and benefits are the usual ones, but what about cube/office size, cube wall height, noise levels, access to dual monitors, freedom to use any editor, 20% time to work on projects outside your usual scope of work, public credit for work, ability to open-source work, a ban on draconian intellectual property agreements, and so on...
How do we prevent the union from being co-opted by leadership that isn't representing the workers well, or is neglecting the needs/desires of some minority of members?
How do layoffs work? Job security through seniority doesn't seem good for productivity or morale, but if management can lay people off for arbitrary reasons then it can create excuses to lay people off for union organizing.
We have -- we are all citizens. If you're a citizen of the United States, here is the first sentence of the document that instantiates that union:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
At its core, it is about people agreeing to act together in order to live better lives.
I have no problem with H1B visas in the union as long as everyone is working for the same entity, why wouldn't they be welcome. Unions are to be inclusive, not exclusive, there are strength in numbers. Sometimes it's the only way to face down the money grubbing people running a company.
