“Or AFL-CIO President George Meany, who fired the AFL’s secretarial staff when they tried to form a union of their own over putrid office conditions.”
Unions are not for the employees. They are for the people running the unions and whoever they work for (like the mafia) so they can get rich. It’s like communism isn’t for the people. It’s just a means for some people to get into power (and accumulate wealth) who could not do so otherwise.
When I was a teenager in the Retail Clerk’s union I asked what was the job of the thuggish looking guys who were always around the union president. A woman told me, “if you step out of line, they convince you to get back with the program.” I said, “you mean they beat people up?” “Oh, yeah.”
My wife worked in a cotton mill. You could tell who was going to be the next union leader because he was the candidate that wasn’t walking around wearing an azz-kicking