No need to read my short article about collective bargaining, the headline says it all. Basically, by bargaining with several different unions, various collectives are able to work off of each other to extract bigger and bigger contracts. If there was only one collective, and perhaps just one across the board raise for everybody, collective bargaining could work.
It amazes me how the real grain of truth within the bigger controversy always gets overlooked and under publicized. Each collective bases their deal on what other collectives have already gotten, or on what they think other collectives will get. The problem is, each collective believes their collective is more important than the other collectives, and no collective wants to look like they got the weakest deal for their own union.
Combine all the collectives, everybody gets the same percentage of raise, and that could go a long way towards solving the collective bargaining issue.