Unions: saviors or demons

Having come from a Pro-union family, I have to admit I am biased...but I also have remained as open minded as I could.
In the past 26+ years, I've been a part of CWA, as a steward, Local Vice-president and currently President. I've seen the need for Unions, and I've certainly seen the downside of Unions. But like so many other things in our lives, Union good far outweighs the bad.
Tennessee is a right-to-work state. This means it is also a right-to-fire state. Without a Union, you have no representation. You have no bargaining, and you have to accept just about anything any employer hands out, without recourse. Your "rights" are actually two. Stay employed and take what you get, or leave. This is called "churn" in the industry. Most employers have a churn rate of well over 50%. This is not hard to document...just start paying attention where ever you go and see if you find employees who have been there a long time. Even many of our manufactoring jobs now have churn rates rising to excessive levels.
While employers love this...it cuts into things like seniority, vacation pay, benefits, and relates directly to the "bottom line", it many times hurts their business for a few reasons. One is longevity creates a wealth of knowledge about the job. Experience is the best teacher, but it is hard to create that wealth when employees rotate so quickly.

more to come..........................