alt Hacker News> In the west "we" forgot how unions and strong labor parties gave us weekends, sick leave, holidays, etc. Now we pay the price.
Unions have power for one reason alone: the powerful need to keep the labour force on-board.
When the powerful do not need to care about labour, this happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
Norway seems like an obvious counter example? If the unions and state grow enough power before resources start to get extracted it seems like they can keep the curse in check.
It has also been protecting politics from capital in various ways; public funding of political parties, strict bans on various forms of political adverts, forced disclosure laws, essentially forcing capital into a single visible chair (NHO), etc.