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Your account is also very one-sided. Unions in Germany, for example, have engaged with management about how to reposition industry in the face of a more globalised market. In the UK the relationship between unions and management was mostly confrontational and antagonistic, reducing the bigger problem (that the world was changing rapidly and that industry needed to adapt) to a highly polarised war over wages. Management (and government) clearly bear blame for this, but so do the unions.
h2o-
Which Labour sort of tried to do with "In place of strife" at the end of the 60s and less obviously in the late 70s.
The unions and parts of the party blocked it.
The Unions were short sighted but don't exclude the hopeless management of parts of british industry from responsibility for the failures of the 60s,70s and 80s
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Unions in Germany, for example, have engaged with management about how to reposition industry in the face of a more globalised market.
Unions, just like people who want to depress wages etc. are dependent on reasonably equal global conditions. If they get outflanked by much lower wages for workers elsewhere, there's not a lot they can do. They're only going to be effective when a new International backs up their work, and I don't mean the Capitalist (Globalist) International.
Peter_Carter
Oliver Schick
Overall unions are a good thing, and countries where they are stronger have less inequality (according to the IMF). It's a neoliberal myth that the economic problems of the 1970 were caused by unions. In the 70s the economic problems started with the oil shock, but the deregulation of the financial sector and the growth of credit led to more money on the economy than there was capacity to use, and further inflation. Government response to this was to try to reduce money in the economy through wage caps, which Trades Unions tried to protect their members from.
@winnifred1849 interesting that your income has increased - better rate, freelance tax efficiency, or longer hours?