My Danish engineers union helps me look over employment contracts before I sign so I fully understand my rights and unenforceable terms, they tell me if I'm asking for too little in salary, and they give me great insurance rates (like USAA in the states) for home, salary, and dental. They're also there for me if I just want to talk about my career or need guidance. I'm not forced into being a member but I really value them. It's nice to feel taken care of.
Employers work with unions here. It's not antagonistic like in the US. I don't know where it went wrong but to me it's very much like the antagonism between drivers and cyclists in the US: cyclists and drivers hate each other there and both sides frequently try to provoke the other (Critical Mass is the most obnoxious thing I've ever experienced and I'm not even a driver). There's none of that here. We have a lot of public infrastructure to support cyclists here but even in cities with relatively poor cycling infra like Berlin that antagonism is missing.
If I had to guess it's that there's a culture of seeing-only-from-your-side of things in the States: you're black, I'm white, you're male, I'm female, you're an elite, I'm blue-collar and you'll never know how it feels to be me. And because you'll never know, you are my enemy.
Personally, I feel that a lot of this is driven by inequality. If you feel that nothing you do makes things any better, then you'll look to take out your frustration on other people, preferably people who don't have enough power to fight back (i.e. your fellow citizens).
When I was working 48 to 72 hours a week as an EMT, I didn't find many of my coworkers to be "mediocre lazy donkeys." Far from it. They were kind and hardworking people. They were also frequently subjected to incompetent or inattentive managers who didn't both knowing the company policies and had to be constantly reminded to see employees as people. As a union steward I had to call managers several times per week to straighten out issues that should have required nothing more than common sense.
The reality of things isn't generally dramatic and hyperbolic, like you make out. Managers weren't looking for opportunities to screw people, and I wasn't looking for opportunities to make it harder to do business. They wanted to get on with their day, and I wanted to help my coworkers have good jobs. Evil? Come on.
Did that include some power-naps? I don't know if the human mind can stay alert for that long without visual hallucinations and/or episodes of microsleep. My personal experience was that rhigs got weird after 36 hours of no sleep, then again I had no practice
