“Unions are only 7% of the workforce and as such mostly irrelevant to the trade/political discussion. But we’ll take what we can get from them.”
True, but membership is not homogeneous throughout the country. In PA it’s 12%. In certain counties/districts it can be even higher. There are also people who aren’t in unions but are in union families and traditional union communities that depend on a large factory or mine. And they vote. In municipalities that sometimes have 20% of registered voters turning out in off-year elections, that matters “bigly.”
I used to hate unions. Now I am ambivalent towards them.