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Let me begin by making it abundantly clear that I believe in a union's right to organize. That right keeps leadership honest, and can never go away.
I also believe that unions did heroic work beginning as far back as the 1830s to correct nasty abuses that probably would not have been corrected any other way. Our eight hour workday and five-day workweek, minimum employment age, fair pay, paid vacations, health benefits, 401k matching and the emphasis on safety in the workplace would not exist if unions didn't pave the way. The unions were radical and revolutionary...and they were right.
Where one voice could be ignored by management, there was power in numbers. It was about 100 years of heavy lifting that we need to appreciate.
The problem is that in the last fifty years, unions have gone from driving necessary and reasonable change to overreaching spurred by greed and pettiness. Holding the employees and profits of a company as leverage, their stance became get all you can as long as you can get it. Rather than a revolution, it became extortion. And weak leaders caved.
Additionally, many unions have become a gangrenous hiding place for bad employees. Moreover, most unions have made it extremely difficult for managers to hold employees accountable and for excellent employees to advance on their own merit.
Their credibility has eroded and most Americans are no longer impressed. And this is the problem the union picketers have in Wisconsin...most Americans are not sympathetic to their cause anymore.
When Americans read about bad teachers in New York getting paid their whole salary to do nothing for years because it would be even more expensive to fire them, they are unimpressed and lose sympathy.
When they read about some union workers who can retire in their forties with full retirement benefits, they are unimpressed and lose sympathy.
When they read about certain union workers getting laid off, but still collecting their paychecks until they get another job (which defeats the purpose of laying them off and leaves the former employee with zero incentive to find another job), they are unimpressed and lose sympathy.
Less than 13 percent of Americans are in unions. And the number is falling. No matter how many union workers show up in Wisconsin, no matter how long they stay, no matter how loud they get, few of the other 87 percent care.
Without sympathy from the majority of the nonunion citizenry, their political weight has the impact of a feather. Only their donated money to certain political campaigns has kept them in play to whatever degree they are.
Unions can't claim their heroic past as a reason for people to rally to their cause any more than Barack Obama can call himself heroic just because Abraham Lincoln was. To celebrate people as heroic, they must be heroic in their own right.
Most Americans feel like unions have been coddled too long. Most (especially good workers) prefer to work in nonunion environments. I know...I've talked to them.
Americans hear the unions. They see them. They just don't care much. And unions have only themselves to blame. | 
