I feel like your point, although containin validity, kinda misses the forests for the trees w/regards to what I was trying to express.
By no means am I claiming every particular union is perfect. What I am claiming is that organized labor is, at present, an important way for people in the working class (which really does include us white-collar knowledge professionals, at the end of the day) to gather power and use it to negotiate decent pay, humane treatment, fair treatment, etc, when there's a long and very visible history of the folks in positions of management and power being very comfortable with exploiting and abusing the employees of their own companies, if they can get away with it.
Unions are a means, not an end -- like government. Like the market.
I think the difference is in the US there is a strong history of busting up unions specifically to disempower workers.
There absolutely are legitimate reasons to not want to join a union.
However, “both sides can be right” so to speak, whitewashes (word chosen deliberately) away the historical fact and current reality of systemic suppression of and propaganda against union organizing by US workers.
True! So, better governing systems for a union, no?
You can’t get rid of power, just redistribute it. As flawed as democracy is, that’s what it attempts to do.
Or do we want to get rid of governments? ;)
In that case I’ll happily make the same snarky comment about whatever collection of humans accrue and then abuse power in our new government-free society.
People are naturally social. There will always be power, wielded in one way or another. But we have and will figure out schemes to wield it in a to benefit the many more than the few.