Of course, the GP might be from a country with another experience.

Contrast that with countries where unions (like health care) are not tied to an employer. The whole dynamic is very different, and I think less adversarial between unions and employees.

In the US if you have a problem with your union, you are out of luck. Make waves, and the union will make your life hell. It's a second layer of rent seeking management.

Ever since the SEIU tried to take a cut of all government benefits to families who care for disabled people in MN, it was obvious that unions here exist to serve only themselves.

It was a moment in history that will not repeated in any of our lifetimes. Anything else against this backdrop is basically a rounding error.

I was alive during the drawdown of US industrial capacity and my entire family was blue collar mostly union workers. In my teens and 20's I worked such jobs. This narrative still rings largely true to me. The amount of outright waste and fraud in these industries at the labor level was astronomical. We were begging to be outcompeted. Combined with managerial incompetence we were doomed.

Unless of course we have another world war, which isn't really unlikely.