[TomMckenny]

I agree that there is nuance and details that make it more useful in some cases than others. Conversely, unions can assist a companies survival. There are cases where even the teamsters(!) agreed to pay cuts to save businesses. And of course it can occasionally go wrong and there can be incompetence just like everything else in this world. But there are some widely held beliefs that demonize unions more than should be.

For example[1], empirically the presence of a union does not correlates with a bad workplace or failing business because the bulk of last half of the twentieth century saw widespread union membership yet was dominated by enormous growth in both production and quality of life along side high job satisfaction. While the last 40 years with declining union membership has seen slower GDP growth and in some cases quality of life reversal. So unions can't be causing the problem.

And the Us vs Them attitude is certainly close to catastrophic. But people aren't going to go through the effort, stress and risk of forming a union unless there are already some never addressed grievances in the first place. The antagonism would have to precede the talk of unionizing not be caused by the appearance of the union. And after the fact, there is at least some small chance of discussing, explaining and solving the problems. But I too would bail long before it got that broken. But for tight labor markets, with few and poorly run industries, this choice doesn't exists.

[1]in western countries and Japan