specialized fields, unions are absolutely essential to prevent exploitation by ownership. For example, if professional athletes didn’t have player unions to advocate on their behalf, do you think these billionaire owners would be sharing nearly as much wealth with the very people who are responsible for generating their wealth? No way. They would be keeping far more money for themselves.

Additionally, unions bargain not only for compensation but also for better working conditions. Ownership in some fields has historically put profits far above worker physical health and mental health. Take the mining industry, for example. The conditions they have been required to work under in the past have been detrimental to their emotional health, and even fatal. Without miner unions, how many more fatalities would have occurred over the years?

Unions in America along with political parties who are friendly to unions (such as the Democratic Party) have been primarily responsible for dramatically improving working conditions in the United States. Countries where unions don’t exist continue to see abysmal working conditions and large scale exploitation of labor (see, for example, certain industries in Africa and South America). To abolish unions would be about the worst thing to happen in a country that wants to be civilized.

The idea that unions are bad in all cases and should be done away with is an absolutely awful conservative idea perpetuated by business owners who want to keep all the power and money under their control, at the expense of the very people who are making them money.

Unions help keep ownership honest.