I think a fair bit of regulation around employment has stepped up as unions have been weakened.  Strong unions allowed people to band together to prevent unfair working conditions, but since the unions were dependent fundamentally on the business, they had to keep in mind real business requirements in their asks.  Governments trying to protect workers from unfair situations don&#x27;t have the give and take of collective bargaining.<p>I feel like most businesses would probably prefer to pay workers more because of collective bargaining and worry less about compliance, but a variety of legal and social changes keep collective bargaining from happening.  Unions in California were criticized in a recent forbes opinion piece I read for wanting to exempt union run shops from the minimum wage, but frankly, that seems like a sensible position to take.<p>Unfortunately most advocates of the free market seem to hate unions, so any advantage collective bargaining might have over government regulation in terms of giving employees a fair deal while keeping regulatory costs low gets downplayed.<p>edit: I put a space between any and advantage to fix a typo.