I’ve worked with skilled trade unions for years. The ones I’ve dealt with (which are local affiliates of Teamsters and some other larger unions) were okay in what they provided to the members, such as cheap training and other such items.
The problem was, between the company and the government, you were quite likely to not need the union at all. The union several training classes at $120 each. The company (everywhere, not just in it’s union locations) offered the same classes for free. The medical benefits were never rolled under the union and always controlled by the company. The union was just taking up space.
Not to mention, the bi-yearly contract renewal flyer to the union members was always full of complete bull. I kept one around for a few years after I left my last employer, and it literally said “We are fighting to double your pay!” among other grandiose claims.
These particular skilled workers earned about $28 median an hour. The company certainly wasn’t going to start paying $56 an hour. At the end of the two and half months of negotiations, a 4% raise was agreed upon for the employees and a 12.5% raise in union dues (the company paid side of the union dues) was put in and the negotiating was over.
There is a time and a need for collective bargaining…but a lot of unions, in my opinion, spend too much time trying to legitimize themselves to their members. “We are relevant! Really!” It’s kind of a shambling state of affairs. Unions could try something like re-branding themselves as an ACLU-type lawyerin’ group for the little guy and perform bargaining and legal help for employees to drive a higher value for the members and ostensibly drive value and prop up the idea of unions, but they really are the same as they were 60+ years ago.
On the union member side, the union members that reported to me didn’t like the union, but the place was locked to a union contract. The company would have to fire all of them and then hire them back as scabs to drop the contract, and that wasn’t worth the trouble (production stopping, etc).
Disclosure: I wasn’t in the union (nor was I ever a part of that particular union), I was a manager with the company.
For my own union experience, I was a member of four unions (well, one union collapsed financially and was absorbed by a larger union…so 3.5?) and they never proved their value for my weekly 1.5% contribution to their bank account.
Further Disclosure: I have never worked in a union in a place like Chicago where they are firmly entrenched and control things like retirements and medical plans, either.