I've never been a Union Man. The one time in my life that I was a dues-paying union member, the union was promoting rules that effectively forced me out of my job. (The union's lawyer felt compelled to remind our little local that we had the right to sue the state union for non-representation.) I voted against union representation the 2 or 3 times I had the chance. I even grew up reading The Reader's Digest with its selection of stories about corrupt big city unions and railroad featherbedding.
I've never been a Union Man, but I've never been afraid of unions. My parents were non-unionized professionals; my grandfathers were split, one in the unions and one not. During my lifetime, the good that unions had accomplished was increasing adopted into law and the social structure of the country. The corruption and perversion of union organizations was regularly and successfully being prosecuted. Union membership was on a long, slow decline and the question of whether unions were still relevant was being discussed.
So the current atmosphere of fear is a great puzzle to me. There seems to be a morbid dread of unions on the part of many people. This fear ranges across most social and economic classes, encompassing the exttremely rich, the middle class, the rural poor, and representatives of who knows what other categories of modern life. Rich people have been recorded offering vast sums of money to politicians who offer to "do something about these unions"; a hand-painted sign along a back road advocates that we "Abolish Unions".
The public expression includes fear not only of unions, but also the fear of immigrants, of other religions, of hearing foreign languages in one's own neighborhood, of strangers that one passes on the street. Laws have been passed to classify foreign-born children as economic outlaws, to restrict the opening of mosques, to prohibit government services from being available in Spanish, and to allow neighbors to arm themselves secretly. Why arm yourself secretly? Why at all?
For any particular opinion or action, any individual might plausibly deny that fear is the primary motivation. But the overall pattern is clear. It is a pattern of fear.
In the matter of labor unions, this fearfulness is particularly inexplicable. I find it hard to imagine that many of these opponents of organized labor are sufficiently affected by the labor movement, or by any single union, as to make it worth forming a strong opinion. The alternative explanation is that unions -- and strangers -- are merely an identifiable object to which people's fears can be assigned. The fears that inform this anti-union movement may have nothing to do with unions.
I've never been a Union Man. I can imagine unionism eventually finding itself in the dustbin of history, although they likely can't be put there by the irrational fears of others. On the other hand, if unions could be abolished tomorrow by fiat, the fear would still remain. It would simply have to be reassigned.