The way the union regulations work out here, you may only work at a certain company if you belong to a certain union (a single organization). You can’t for example, choose between multiple competing unions or work without representation. I’ve heard this is different in other locations like Germany.
As a result, having a job at that company means you automatically adopt paying their fees, their organizational structure, the pay scale they’ve negotiated (often can turn into tenure-based, which is basically age-based), etc. This means you sort of have two management structures in a sense. Since unions participate politically and fund campaigns and such, you are automatically paying your salary to support political candidates you may disagree with, because union leadership makes the choice on how to spend the money it collects.
It can also lead to workplace inefficiency and frustrations that customers end up paying for. As an example, if you work at Boeing you may have some task you can finish immediately yourself (like screwing something in) but the union protects the job security of some people by saying that only those people may do certain tasks. As a result you might need to wait to coordinate with the screw guy to do something you could finish in 5 seconds.
I am wondering if years of anti union propaganda pushed to the surface the bad examples and all the good ones are just hidden. I am not in a union but what I know from my family that are in such jobs in public or private sector is that6 they get only benefits. Like if they have to work more hours you get paid double for those hours, you are forced to take your vacation days - this means that management can't put pressure on you to work on weekends because they are bad at managing, management will try to optimize to avoid extra hours. Where my brother works he is evaluated each year, there is company wide(multinational) scheme on how people are paid so you can get a raise but there are no 10X mechanical engineers that work 1 night and have the output of 10 good regular engineers.
Without this protections the company could promote the people that stay and work extra hours and from home for free or find different ways to abuse you.
As a result, having a job at that company means you automatically adopt paying their fees, their organizational structure, the pay scale they’ve negotiated (often can turn into tenure-based, which is basically age-based), etc. This means you sort of have two management structures in a sense. Since unions participate politically and fund campaigns and such, you are automatically paying your salary to support political candidates you may disagree with, because union leadership makes the choice on how to spend the money it collects.
It can also lead to workplace inefficiency and frustrations that customers end up paying for. As an example, if you work at Boeing you may have some task you can finish immediately yourself (like screwing something in) but the union protects the job security of some people by saying that only those people may do certain tasks. As a result you might need to wait to coordinate with the screw guy to do something you could finish in 5 seconds.
Corruption is also common, although I cannot say how much exactly. One of the largest unions in the US is currently going through an embarrassing corruption scandal right now (https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-prosecutors-ask-uaw-mem...). There’s also a history of unions and the mafia working together (https://lrionline.com/mafiaunion-ties-still-strong/), although it might be unfair to blame unions for this pattern as much as blaming the mob.