Nordic countries don’t have statutory minimum wages and I think that most of the time, the worst paid Scandinavians are better off than the worst-paid Americans.

But the system has its obvious flaws. Not all workers are covered by collective bargaining. Unions and employers alike love to hand-wave it away by pretending they are all high-paid professionals like lawyers or engineers who doesn’t need a minimum wage and while that is true for many un-unionised workers, the category also covers the absolute shit-tier jobs with shit-tier employers.

Often the people working these jobs are ethnic minorities or otherwise marginalised. Unions are more concerned with the interests of steadily employed unionised workers and do little for these marginalised workers as they are often not union members. When they do care about improving their conditions it is usually because they are competing with unionised workers.

The Nordic model might relatively speaking be in the good end of the spectrum of working class conditions under capitalism but it definitely has it’s flaws.