> The workers aren't drones, they have the agency to choose another job. If a company is underpaying workers relative to the rest of the market, they'll struggle to hire and retain employees without the interference of a union.

The problem is that all employers have certain common interests, and they are generally more organized and powerful than individual workers, which biases the market status-quo in their favor. The market doesn't fix that.

This is the magical "perfect competition" view of the market that often doesn't match reality at all.

There are a lot of defacto cartels where all of the corporations determine a ceiling on wages they won't go over.

There was a big case with Apple and other Silicon Valley corporations were found to have colluded to not hire employees working for any of the other companies.

Oh, yes, because we've never seen a case where large companies entered into no poach agreements to suppress worker wages, right?

Oh wait... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Quit the gaslighting.