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Jeepers. Thank you so much for this article!

I am not union, never have been, and have never been related to anyone who was except the teachers in the family. But, Jeepers, why would a regular union meeting of a non-government funded group become a political rally off season?

Something terrible happens when an organization or government beaurocracy outlives its reason for existing. Seems to me, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, probably the closest thing to immortality on earth. It's as if the whose purpose morphs from satisfying a need to creating a need (often, an ideology) to justify its continuing existence.

My two cents, FWIW…

You are a musician too?

I've had some experience with unions, both reasonably good, and bad.

My normal employment is not a unionized profession. But I have been on projects where it was my job to direct work executed by union craftsmen, and sometimes to work alongside union craftsmen.

On the good side, they are generally well-trained. Their union training means that there is a certain body of knowledge that all are expected to have, and generally do have. With non-union craftsmen, since there is no standardized training, there is more "diversity" in their background, since they have found their way into the profession by a variety of means. Some non-union craftsmen are very good, of course, unions don't have a monopoly on talent, but there is something to say for a standardized apprenticeship program. That is one area where unions shine.

In areas where union contractors have to compete with non-union, they are almost as flexible and cooperative as non-union workers. The union companies here, for example, are very good to work with. Their labor costs are higher, but they maintain their competitive edge by being good.

A lot of the annoying union rules that might tie my hands in other areas don't apply here, I have worked with and alongside union contractors here without knowing they were union, and found them to be as helpful as any non-union contractor. In my work, while I am technically "white collar", it is not unusual for me to take tool in hand to make something work, and around here it is not an issue.

Years ago I worked in an area where we were required to use unions, and while the local union guys were, again, quite good to work with, a lot of guys from the eastern unions came in. They were almost impossible to work with, and made the project hell on earth. "Thuggish" described many of them to a "t".

So, my experience is that where unions have to compete, and have that kind of competitive reality check, they can be quite good to work with. Where they control, and they don't have to compete, they can be a nightmare.

Finally, I had an interesting experience a couple of years ago. The business cycle in my line of work hit an extended low after the war started, and I was offered union employment in a field that had nothing to do with my normal work. Having nothing better to do, I accepted it.

It was an interesting experience on several levels. But while the guys were convinced as union guys usually are that it was only thanks to the union that they had a decent life, I took away the opposite impression. Their belief that a job is a kind of property, that they were owed a living, that anyone who left the union to work in management had broken solidarity with them, created a very negative work atmosphere. They were generally miserable, and probably none of them knew why.

In general terms, I consider unions to be a kind of cancer. Companies who have unions usually deserve them, they have allowed an "us-versus-them" mentality to invade their workplace, and that opens the door to unionization. Once the unions are in, of course, the "us-versus-them" only gets worse unless you make a concerted effort to turn it around. Since most companies don't understand what they did to bring unions on themselves, they will never turn it around, they will just live with a permanently adversarial work environment and consider it normal. Which, for them, it is.

Unions and management of unionized industries can't imagine that its possible to have a non-adversarial workplace. For them, it isn't.