In the devils advocate position. The union is a club you join with dues paid every month, in the sort of vague hope this will get you greater bargaining power with the employer. And it mostly works but there are downsides. If there is any meritocracy left in the corporation it is sucked out, replaced by seniority, that is, the only people that get ahead are those too stupid to leave. You have to maintain a bunch of useless leeches in the union administration. and when the company does poorly it tends to implode violently under the labor burden rather than be able to scale down. (everybody loses their job rather than just a few)