I have never heard of that. Why would that be?
Other, so-called "right-to-work" states have outlawed the practice.
The clauses make sense for the union and their members because you cannot restrict the benefits of union representation to only members. That creates "free-rider" problems. The opposite argument is about freedoms of contract and association.
I'm unsure if you are typically allowed to make your own agreements with the employer when there's union representation. That's probably defined in negotiation, and whatever has traditionally been agreed upon for steelworkers etc. may not be the best model for tech workers.
No, in closed shop contracts, this is expressly prohibited. Violating this and negotiating with your employer directly could be considered grounds for termination of union membership (ie, termination of employment). The employer would also face consequences as well.
> whatever has traditionally been agreed upon for steelworkers etc. may not be the best model for tech workers.
That's true - unfortunately, the NLRA (the law which regulates union operations) is very rigid, and it does not provide different stipulations for different industries.
There's a reason that virtually all NLRA-regulated unions in each state enact the same corporate policies for membership, the same contract structures, etc. - those are the ones which turn out to provide a stable (in the literal sense) balance of power under the laws.
It's very unlikely that an NLRA-regulated union in the tech industry would operate differently, in the long run, from the NLRA-regulated unions in every other industry.
By maintaining a chokehold on who can supply a vital resource (labor) to businesses, Unions have a history of strangling their patrons - See Detroit. From a distributed systems perspective, Unions represent a single point of failure.
I'm entirely in favor of groups banding together to request, nee, demand, rights, pay increases, healthcare. Once they start having 'management' tiers of their own, they're no longer representing you - They're a corporation you work for, contracting to your nominal employer. Just being clearer about it doesn't work - Microsoft hires an army of 'contractors' who are abused in precisely the same way. Nor does having multiple competing pseudo-unions - There's dozens of headhunters to go through to work for microsoft, but they all compete on 'price' and drive wages down[2].
[1]http://www.nrtw.org/required-join-pay-teacher/ - "educators cannot be required to do more than pay a union fee (typically called an "agency fee") that equals their share of what the union can prove is its costs of collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment" - Which is to say, you don't have to join the union, they just get to negotiate for you, take a cut of your pay, and be the intermediary that represents you - While you've proved your disloyalty to them by not choosing to 'join' them, so they have no actual incentive to do so. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrichs_v._California_Teach...
[2] The lightly fictionalized https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs, which still rings very true more than 20 years later.
Yes, a union is pretty much a corporation that supplies labor. The biggest difference is how they're governed. Nobody bats an eye if a supplier negotiates an exclusive contract.
I can negotiate very well on my own, as opposed to being stuck into seniority "levels", thank you very much.
Within the band the company pays whatever they think you are worth.
