I used to work in the railroad industry, which has incredibly strong unions. Their unions will flat out tell you that their goal is to maintain high wages and good work conditions for CURRENT members. Management tells them that if they don’t take concessions, the workforce will shrink over time and the unions say they don’t care. Its all about current wages and benefits, period.
Kinda what the UAW did.
Kept the wages for present workers the same or even higher, and make new hires start out at half the wage of the current ones.
I was stunned when I saw the earnings for a train engineer. It’s unbelievable and unsustainable. Robot trains are right around the corner.