At the risk of getting flamed, I will try to answer this honestly. Where I worl there are all sorts of hostile work conditions...asbestos, lead, black mold. Many times my co-workers are told to perform tasks which place them in harm’s wayand it is the union threat which forces management to clean the area before the worker must go in. That said, I think the unions have been hijacked by mobsters intent on enriching themselves at the expense of the taxpayers.
They certainly did have a purpose in the past (I like the bumper sticker “If you enjoy your weekends thatnk a union member”), but what they fought for is now law. It is illegal for any company to send someone into an unsafe work environment, and those that do at the least can expect workers comp claims out the wazoo on top of fines, lwasuits, etc. They have done nothing to save jobs in the recent past, and in fact had sped up the process of shipping them overseas. They don’t just make business less profitable (which I guess is their stated aim - to allocate a larger share of earnings to workers), but they also make them incredibly inefficient via work rules and inflexibility in terms of automation.
At this point the companies have the edge because they can be very selective about where they set up shop (much to the dismay of California & New York); if potential employees think they’ll slowly strangle the business it can simply set up somewhere else. The migration of auto manufacturing from Detroit to the south is very telling (and very beneficial to those states that now have non-UAW taxpayers versus UAW members on the dole, on top of companies contributing to their local tax bases).
In my opinion, a union has outlived its usefulness under two conditions: (1) if its demands for wages, benefits and working conditions make good employers unprofitable; and (2) if it sees its primary role as a political action group rather than a collective bargaining tool.