We definitely talk about corporations in this way. All the time, in fact!
(We can take that comparison further: people on HN sometimes do suggest that Uber drivers might be better off if they could only be hired as salaried employees but almost never say that about highly paid freelance developers. It's pretty similar when we're looking at the respective cost/benefit of collective bargaining arrangements for local bus drivers vs highly skilled developers earning two orders of magnitude more than bus drivers in an job market that offers practically unrivalled opportunities for people with their skillset.)
Edit: For those who disagree, how many modern societies are there without corporations running a majority of the economy? Not a single one. So as far as we know it doesn't work. It can work in theory, but it has never worked in practice. There are however many examples of modern economies with very little union influence, USA is an example, and USA is a better place to live than most countries. Unions can help, but countries that focused on strengthening unions and banning corporations did much worse than for example USA. Strengthening corporations and weakening unions however might have had some small negative effects but nearly not at the same level.
The US is arguably pretty subpar in terms of quality of life compared to other developed nations (little vacation, really expensive school system, poor health system for the masses leading to a lower life expectancy, high criminality rate, etc.). Of course, not all of it is due to unions, but they are all the consequences of policies being “pro business” instead of “pro people”.
No there aren't. USA is not an example, every significant aspect of modern employment in the US has been shaped by unions.
Playing devil's advocate, what you say is probably true on the supply side. However, the other side, consumer demand, is mostly driven by people unaffiliated with corps. That is, families arguably drive the majority of the economy. (That said this argument feels more than a little pedantic, but it must be made!)
No? Do you consider the fact that very few people have working conditions like those outlined above an enormously valuable thing for society?
Great. Then you agree that Unions have created enormous amounts of value as well.
Just like the US has three branches of government there are really four fundamental organizations in society: government, corporations, religion and unions.
They work best by keeping each other in check. Right now unions have been decimated and corporations have bought out the government and religion.
Unions aren't optional, we're just slowly and corrosively finding out why, despite their flaws, they need to exist (and they don't work if people aren't involved in them).
"running a majority of the economy" doesn't seem to necessarily be the relevant metric to be optimizing for. But I'll cede that many of the largest countries in the world do not have solid union rights.
There's reasons other than being an absolute requirement for why everyone's currently using something
But it is always about individual bad actors, not "corporations".
When MacDonald's franchises get press showing they're stealing employees' wages, people blame MacDonald's, or the individual franchises.
When some union leader embezzles money, people talk about "those unions".
There really aren't. Perhaps if there were, union representation wouldnt be so desperately needed.
