How do unions work? How did they get in power and give us rights?
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Unions derive power from three things primarily:
1. Strength in numbers. By banding together and agreeing to bargain as a collective, workers can demand certain baselines for compensation under threat of strike. This means more stable, predictable compensation all around, but it also typically means that high performers don’t get rewarded as much as they otherwise may.
2. Legislation and courts that protect unions. Businesses with cheapskate standards can respond to a strike by firing the entire workforce and hiring extremely cheap labor to replace them, usually immigrants, for pennies on the dollar. This kind of thing is almost certainly a breach of contract and/or illegal, but business-friendly judges and legislatures have either turned a blind eye to it or explicitly codified it as legal.
3. The ability to compel dues. By requiring that even non-union members pay dues if they work for a union shop, unions can ensure that there isn’t a back door for management to make a bunch or non-union hires and “eliminate the positions” of the union members, thereby depriving the union of its funds. This ability has been eroded in “right to work” states, where legislation basically voided large parts of a union’s power. The argument is that it’s unfair to ask non-members to pay because they may politically disagree with the existence of unions and do not want to support them, but this is a pretty disingenuous characterization. Those workers still benefit from the union’s existence, namely the protections it provides.
You may notice that all these pillars have basically been destroyed in the last 30 or so years, and you’d be right. Ever since Reagan fired air traffic controllers for striking, it’s been open season on unions, and no one really seemed to care. It’s no coincidence that ever since then, wealth growth has concentrated mostly at the C-level, and growth for non-supervisory workers basically stalled relative to inflation. There are some industries which are exceptions (software, engineering, etc.), but it’s a lot harder to be a non-college-educated worker these days.
So the basic answer to your question is that unions derive power from sources that have largely been cut off.
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