When people say they “support unions” they mean that they support laws that “artificially increase one side’s bargaining power”, which you say you don’t. The most important of such laws are ones that inhibit employers from replacing striking workers.
Without this law and the corollary of reasonable firing (as in with a lawful reason), unions are dead on arrival as anyone willing to unionize will get fired on the spot.
This is similar to the procedural loophole of registering manifestations where the mayor or other redeposit body can virtually countermand the right to organize. It happens all the time.
If conditions are bad workers have an increased ability to unionize. If they're not bad they don't. That seems like a fair incentive for businesses to keep conditions good. I think unions got a bad rap precisely because they used the government as a lever (and the trappings of that, e.g. UAW bosses in Detroit). If the government steps back the system balances itself.
I 100% agree and should have said that in the original post. I’m not exactly sure how I feel about those laws (though I flat out oppose attempts to require cause for firings in general), but I mainly wanted to point out that principled libertarians trying to square the circle, the way the person I was relying to was, are trying to have their cake and eat it too. Unions can only exist and be effective, in the vast majority of cases, because the state uses its coercive power to give them artificially-inflated bargaining power. Whether that’s for the better or worse is a different question.
