I'll preface by saying that in this environment, yes unions are a good thing.
However, the mere fact that the above statement is true is a very sad thing. We should not need a large private corporate organization to advocate and negotiate good wages and safe working conditions for us. The government shouldn't be allowing these large for profit entities to be treating people like this to begin with.
The government should be setting a living wage standard, mind you not a minimum wage, but a living wage. A wage set that if a single parent with dependants was paid they could live comfortably on it. A wage that allows family's to exist in this world outside of the 9-5. Imagine if companies were given tax write-offs for paying their workers above the living wage, thus pushing companies to pay higher wages to lower their tax bracket.
No more of this advocating for a minimum wage that doesn't even allow a single person living alone to live comfortably. No more of this, ok well if I want even the small semblance of protection or advocacy for my job I need to join this union that won't necessarily advocate for my well being, but rather the well being of the majority of the members that may or may not have the same workplace responsibilities as you.
I'm not saying unions are bad, they are in fact the best tool we in this capitalistic society have, and yet it's like commending the brave firefighters for helping contain a fire when the answer is stop giving drunk 5 year Olds matches in an oil soaked rag world. We are just creating more bureaucracy in an already confusing and difficult world.
I feel that in addition to this living wage rule/law their needs to be stricter regulation on private company pay structures to prevent boards and C-Suite from being paid 90% of profits while the lowest paid employee gets fired. Imagine if their was a government mandated pay scale where profits where split up amongst employees based on a tiered scale. So sure higher ups do get paid more, but it won't be 8x that of the guy one rung lower. Some would argue that when sales are lower suddenly everyone gets paid less than the previous quarter. I would counter and say any losses in profit should be felt at the top first and only by low end employees as a last resort.
During the 2008 recession my father lost his construction company and filed bankruptcy for 12 million. However his company lasted for nearly 2 years into the recession and he stopped paying himself and my family almost immediately, because his biggest concern was making sure his employees got paid. He had an unlimited American express business card that he ended up paying employees wages with. He knew he was losing everything, but at the end he decided making sure his employees could make it through this was most important. Even before the recession if things were not doing well we as a family were the ones losing out. Never did that reflect back on his employees wages, they always got paid their worth. However it's businesses like this that go under because the Trumps, Elons, Zuckerbegs and Bezoes of the world make record profits during trying times and axe hundreds of thousands of jobs rather than prioritizing the well being of said employees.
So in conclusion yes we need more unions, but that's just because as shitty as unions are they are a saving grace in today's horrid business world that runs solely on the idea that profits matter above all else…
Profits do not follow us in death and yet these corporations are literally killing us.