There's a reason only 10% of the workforce is represented by unions. Companies ship union type jobs overseas to avoid dealing with unions. That's partly why we have no manufacturing in this country. Unions can kill productivity, I witness it on a daily basis as a non union analyst for a defense contractor with a mostly union labor pool.

The problem, though, is not just a union problem or a management problem. The problem is that Americans tend to be arrogant. In the 50's and 60's we reigned supreme, companies were making tons of money and union employees were earning great wages because unions were able to easily negotiate insane contracts. The problem is that we thought we were doing well because of our business practices. Wrong! It was because we had (thankfully) bombed any possible competition to dust during WWII. Unfortunately, those countries (see Japan) recovered and rebuilt. When businesses had far more efficient competition they couldn't make the necessary changes to survive.

True, much of this was caused by bad management, but a large part of it was unions who refused to renegotiate unrealistic and uncompetitive contracts. By the time concessions would be made it would be 10 years down the road and far too late, as the company would already have new challenges to deal with, starting the cycle over again.

This is why Americans are very weary of unions, whenever there is a downturn and concessions need to be made to save a company unions always seem to be the last ones to enter realistic negotiations, only backing off when a company is entering bankruptcy. Any company that has to be bankrupt to make necessary changes for survival is a company that will never be highly competitive.

That's bad for workers. If Unions would start to worry more about workers (workers need strong companies and companies need strong workers) and less about recieving union dues, you would see a massive rise in trust and enrollments.