Do you want to spend 1% upfront or 100% later? As I said in another comment, employment contract review is often $300-1000, and lawyers will do it for free if they like you.

That’s not the calculation. It is, do you want pay 1% now or have a 0.5% chance of paying 100% later.

Most people don’t have a lawyer look over their employment contract, and most people don’t get screwed over like this when they don’t.

That is not a cut and dry situation.

Honestly, some kind of insurance would probably be more cost effective.

Most people do not have an employment contract. If you do, a lawyer should definitely review it.

In the past, the employer's lawyer would negotiate with the union's lawyer, but we can't have nice things.

And you paid 3%/year for that union lawyer to write a contract that suits her friends (union insiders), probably at your expense.

I'll pay the 1% once, thanks.

You're literally just pulling numbers out of thin air here.

It's not hard to check union dues avg a few percent of income per year. Over a 5 year job this is an order of magnitude more paid out of your salary than the once paid alternative listed here.

The collective weight of the union as a counterweight to employer power and overreach is also wirth something. In a dispute with your employer, HR is never on your side, but the union is.

People need to stop going to HR with their problems, in general. A nice letter from whoever did your contract review works a lot better if you aren't at a union shop, and also isn't very expensive.

The 1% is from the comment I responded to (and is actually higher than my past experience - employment contracts are really easy to read). The 3% is from an average of union dues.