HN is very consistently anti-union. My question is this: Where did you get information about unions? Because people keep mentioning their "bad reputation" and then start listing off a bunch of "facts" that read like they're bullets straight out of one of those anti-union videos during onboard at several major employers (Walmart, Target, Amazon, etc). So anti-union people exactly where does your information come from?…
From speaking with family members who work or worked for Unions.
From a management perspective it is untenable to not be able to hire who you want (because you must offer the job to any "qualified" union employee before you can hire externally), not be able to fire who you want (because you must meet arbitrary requirements set by the union).
From an employee perspective I've seen situations where they want specific or custom arrangements with their boss and their boss would like to give them but they violate union rules so they are either forced to work around it (and face repercussions if they are found out) or refuse to accommodate situations that both the manager and the employee agree upon.
I will also say that I find the anti-anti-union rhetoric very distasteful. I fundamentally agree that employees have the right to discuss their desire to join or form a union but I think that companies have the fundamental right to advocate their position as well. Virtually all of this get's called out as "anti-union" propaganda and I find that very distasteful and disingenuous. Most of the "propaganda" videos I've seen I found to be actually quite reasonable arguments, while most of the anti-anti commentary I find to be disingenuous appeals to emotion.
There are also many industries where unions are massively corrupt. I know nothing about the union here so I won't speak about it, but I do have personal experience with this.
Finally, I will also say that my opinion of unions skews heavily against larger and more diverse ones. Had this been Amazon Warehouse workers choosing to form their own union vs join an existing union, I feel that would have been more successful by virtue of being smaller in scope and more targeted.