They are supposed to serve a higher purpose than just make money.
If you were being equivalently fair to unions you would say that their sole purpose is to take dues.
>a lot unions don't really carry out their core function and there are no consequences for this failure
Yes, they do, they lose members.
And they often use violence or threat of violence to try to stop this - see their reaction to 'scabbing'.
If I say I don't want to work for my company any more they'd either say 'farewell' or even offer me money to stay.
If you don't want to be part of a union or a strike, you better be prepared to be harassed and intimidated.
If it's a competition for who has managed the most extreme violence in relation to an industrial dispute in America the prize would go to the manager of a coal mine in west virginia who brought in a private air force to bomb strikers (battle of blair mountain).
I somehow doubt youll find a union that has managed that level of unbridled violence.
The most extreme violence isnt in defence of livelihoods, it's in the service of profit.
But it is a routine occurrence to have picket lines in industrial disputes today, and to deliberately harass people who choose to go into work.
In the coal mining strikes in the UK in the 80s it got to the point where union members literally killed a taxi driver for taking a worker past a picket line.
Google aren't going to kill an Uber driver for taking me to work at Facebook instead.
The united fruit company paid for paramilitaries to assassinate strikers in Central America.
This is a world away from dropping a brick on a taxi because your livelihood is under threat.
But membership is mandatory if there is a union at that corp. A union is like a service they can't ever unsubscribe from without changing jobs.
For government work especially, unions can start to take over management functions. So employees end up wanting a second union to protect them from abuses by their main union.
This is untrue in every state. In some states you have to pay dues even if your aren't a member, but closed shops aren't legal.
We don't expect a corporation to abuse workers, even if it makes them money.
when they fail to make money, they cease existing and the general consensus is 'good riddance'
The history of bailouts would suggest otherwise.
A lot of people view corporations in a justifiably negative light (very few people say that corporations are an unalloyed good, and I have never heard anyone wish that they could work for an LLC). But a corporation is chartered to make money - we expect it to act accordingly and for the most part companies do make money (when they fail to make money, they cease existing and the general consensus is 'good riddance').
A union on the other hand is chartered to advocate for the rights and needs of workers. The standards and expectations for a union are fundamentally different than for a corporation. It depends on the union, but a lot unions don't really carry out their core function and there are no consequences for this failure. Given that Unions claim a democratic mandate to advocate for labor, people are justifiably upset when they see their union doing nothing to represent their interests.