Since I'm going for broke...
Let me tell you what I think of unions.
I like the idea of unions, but the idea isn’t real. I like the concept of a group of people collectively uniting to stop a boss or large corporation from treating them like dirt. But in my experience, the union just ends up taking the place of the asshole.
For example, I was once a new hire, which meant I had to wait 90 days before becoming an official union member. In my second month there, our location had an unofficial walkout. The union was trying to negotiate a new contract, and a few people thought they could send a message by walking out temporarily.
Anyone who wasn’t yet part of the union and walked out would have been fired. A few did, and they were. A few others knew better (myself included), and we had to deal with co-workers who found "reasons" why we suddenly weren't working out. I remember one of them was a senior citizen, and the other was a woman in early pregnancy — both were slowly pushed out.
Another example: I worked at a place where everyone slacked off. People had been there for years (some for decades), and they acted less like employees and more like schoolchildren struggling to finish their homework. Many would come in late and leave early, and the union kept supporting them.
I did my job as instructed and was quickly promoted. But the "new guy" getting promoted caused trouble — a lot of it — all backed by the union rep, who claimed I hadn’t yet “paid my dues” (hadn’t been there long enough). I was set up for failure. Before I left the job, I was demoted and then humiliated every time I had to use the restroom — because ultimately, the goal was to get me to quit. And I did. But not before finding a new job.
Another example — technically a government job, but unionized since we were contracted — involved a boss who kept trying to pass the buck whenever they screwed up. The place was essentially a revolving door: the supervisor would pin the blame on whoever he thought he could throw under the bus next — not necessarily the newest hire, just whoever he figured would be the easiest target. Despite it being a union job, with heavy dues taken from every paycheck, the so-called union always sided with management. They were basically worthless.
Fun fact: the day they were planning to dismiss me — after using me as the scapegoat one too many times — happened to be my boss’s last day. His supervisor had walked me down to the office, only for us to find my boss screwing some lady on his desk. That little "event" bought me just enough time to find another job, because while they postponed my dismissal, the union still signed off on it.
It’s been my experience that unions are not the fantasy people think they are, and they're usually a sign of a bad workplace. And while I dislike large corporations and what they can get away with, my general experience with them has been either positive or at least manageable.
