R13 The fact that you have a pension is not evidence that most people do too. In 1980 60% of workers had an employer defined benefit plan... by 2020 that was under 10%.

Unions have corruption, they occasionally favor senior workers over new workers, will sometimes interfere in individual worker choices about compensation and work conditions... some union leadership is combative unnecessarily. But unions are a force for worker rights and compensations that can balance private/corporate management that has exponentially increased its compensation, directed wealth to private stock ownership... what used to be "longterm economic development" in companies is now quick profit for management and stockholders no matter what the damage to workers.

Make no mistake about it, through the middle of the 20th century there was a redistribution of wealth unlike any time in human history. A middle class developed in a way that (in America) it was assumed that "most people" were and should be middle class. It was created by the large socio-politico movements responding to the worldwide "Great Depression" (in the US all the policies of FDR's New Deal) AND collective bargaining. Collective bargaining created the middle class (and gave us the weekend etc etc).

By the 80s the super-rich and those beholden to them had worked very hard to counter this distribution of wealth: Unions were demonized, common workers were told/manipulated to think that they could "get a better deal" without unions. Business was impacted by "trained management" MBAs that prioritized profits on spreadsheets and returns to stockholders or private equity ownership class.

Reagan, greed, the 80s (think breaking the air traffic controllers' union), selling the falsehood that "all Americans can be part of the ownership class!", trickle down economics, "unfettered, unregulated growth is a rising tide that lifts all boats", was sold to Americans.

It was a lie, it continues to be a lie, and think-tanks and dark money of the super-rich continues to seel the lie to Americans (MAGA/GOP assertions that Democrats are "socialists" that want to destroy American - which they have now carefully melded to cultural war issues).

Data will show that wealth continues to cluster in the upper quintile (to win support of the elite/management/professional classes), but behind that is enormous wealth of oligarchs or what we sometime call "the 1%"... the lopsided accrual of wealth to the wealthy is very, very different from 1940-1970, and dissolving unions is a central strategy of that.

401k plans replacing pensions is an example of the manipulations and falsehoods that go largely unchallenged - these plans benefit financial institutions, not workers. The "need" to be professional in order to get in the upper quintile (there begin a middle class that is not hollowed out) force people to go to post-secondary training and get loans which indebt them for decades - all benefiting the financial sector. See a pattern here?

People who "hate unions" are 1) a part of the economic elite, or 2) workers who have been convinced that they could also be part of the economic elite "if only"... or/and 3) uninformed, ignoring the data.