My work experience is quite the opposite: First off,the unions took me on, and they won. They won - against a 5’3” hundred pound kid!
Two union goons cornered me when I was young enough to need school permission to hold a job. I was legally entitled to hold that job without joining the union - for thirty days. After my union-free window expired, I quit rather than join a union that would take a huge chunk of my summer earnings, and moved to another job in which I would also be required to join the union but not for another thirty days. On my way home from my first day on that new job (nowhere near fully grown teenage boy, riding a bicycle, faced by two goons in a pickup truck), the union thugs cornered me and threatened to break my arms if I didn’t join or quit.
The thugs won - obviously. I have hated unions ever since then with the passion that they so richly deserve. I never again took a job in a union shop, and my votes throughout my entire life have been shaped by that encounter with evil and by later observations of unions that are still just as thuggish.
Yes. I have a similar story. I wasn’t even resisting, my application must have been delayed and they thought I was resisting and needed ‘encouragement’.