> Unions will get better salaries for low performers and decrease salaries for high performers.
As a worker, I simply don't care if other people are paid well as long as I get paid well. This mindset of "it is not enough for me to succeed, others must fail" is absurd.
Generally, employees do want people who are more productive to be rewarded more, but are rightfully cynical about employers' ability to judge who is producing.
> So there will be 10% salary difference between a guy working 45 hours a week and a guy wo shows up in the office and has all day long coffee breaks.
Almost nobody should be working 45 hours a week. Certainly no one in my field.
It's telling that your primary example of performance is "time spent at desk". This sort of terrible mismeasurement is why employees are cynical about employers' ability to judge who is producing.
> [Unions in Germany] don’t protect one from being fired.
That's probably because they learned from the mistakes of unions in the US. Having to work with incompetent or straight-up drunk coworkers because they can't be fired isn't a great experience.
> Doubling salary over whole career… I don’t know if that’s a good deal.
"Only" doubling salary because you started at a higher wage is a great deal. Union workers are paid more than nonunion at every stage of their career, but how much more disproportionately favors people early in their careers.
