My working class family members (all in the same trade) universally hate unions and their reasons are quite reasonable; my grandfather was in union leadership until he was run out by the mob and my cousin had to pay tribute (e.g a protection racket) to the new leadership.
Recently he had to go on medical leave. When he was ready to go back to work he had to take a physical. He had to go a week without pay until the results of the physical came back. It is total bullshit but he didn’t have a Union to back him and not worth it to sue.
Update: He’s only had a few of these issues in his career, so maybe the union dues he would have paid outweighed the cost of getting stiffed. Adding this because my point wasn’t that unions are awesome, but they can have value… the question is at what cost.
By the time she retired in 21st century, she hated her union.
She particularly hated their support for Obamacare. They had an exception so it didn’t affect their agreements. But that ignored the fact that the nurses had to actually implement it.
It was an administrative clusterf*ck. Nurses spent hours listening to consultants telling them how to improve patient reviews, which were now tied to compensation.
The unions were like “the Democrats now owe us, so we will get paid back down the road.”
She literally quit over that.
The reality is that you are adding a lot of extra 'management' on top of the existing company management when you bring in a union. At the end of the day, a union is a business and it is a profit-seeking business. Employees have to raise a massive fuss and get momentum from members in the union to receive any sort of defense from the union for their grievances.
The rotation aspect is also annoying. If you enjoy a particular job, you are forced to rotate out so that other members can have a chance. The juiciest roles always seem to go to the senior members. If you an apprentice, you just have to take what you get, and endure whatever hazing, teasing, and abuse you receive (tech workers jaws would hit the floor if they witnessed what I lived through).
At the end of the day you have to remember that there is one pie. Everyone wants a piece of the pie... management, employees, and union. Adding more overhead and more bosses is not always an effective way of getting more pie to the employees.
I think there's some truth to the old adage that there's a class of Americans, especially represented among the HN crowd that "see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
There are many reasons for the decline of organized labor in the US. Some cultural yeah, but just as much, if not more, legal...
"Right to work" legislation
Employers fighting harder against unionization
Decreased enforcement of labor laws
Judges (including SCOTUS) who keep striking down labor protections
Media portrayal of unions
source?
People are being bled dry by unsustainably high interest rates and housing costs due to the insatiable appetites of big business.
High tech and Hollywood generated huge money, and Wall Street style money was always anti-Union. It is worth saying that Hollywood movie production is very heavily unionized, and that small system works pretty well.
