As someone who was born in a country with a stronger union movement - public and private than US and having born in a middle class family, i have had 3 major experiences that have defined my opinions on the labor movement and everyone might or might not agree with it - but this is my story.
The fun of being born in a large family is the infinite number of uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews and nieces. Between my father's side and my mother's side, i have 12 uncles and aunts and 32 cousins and i am afraid that i lost count on the number of neices and nephews. In the middle class family that i was born, there was enough to put food on the table and for my father and mom to save for a nice home. Summer vacations was a trip from one uncle's home to another and i wouldn't have it any other way.
My first experience of understanding labor movement was in my eldest's uncle home. When i was a very small boy, i recall his home being a upper middle class home and was always inviting to me for the decoration, television and the endless video tapes of popular movies that played every night and each of us cousins fought for a nice place in front of the 21 inch TV. When i was in middle school, my uncle lost his job in a factory and relocated to our native place. I later learnt that the owners of the factory he worked in had a disagreement with the unions and they locked out and dismissed every employee. My professor in B-school famously claimed - "There are no bankrupt factory owner, only bankrupt companies". I remember vividly how my uncle's life unhinged after he lost his job and was too old to learn a new skill but too young and not enough to retire. A few bad decisions and they ended selling their ancestral home and his last few years ended badly. The proud life he lived was no more!
My second experience was in my own family. Dad was promoted to manage a factory at a fairly young age in his company and we relocated to one of the large cities. My first weekend was spent with his factory workers who came home to help us unpack and settle down. The workers, most of them were below 30 at that time and i remember attending the marriage of at least 5-6 of them. As we spent more time in the place and moved to our newly bought home, we could always count on help from these folks whenever we needed. When i was in 10th grade, i paid an unannounced visit to my dad's office and i was shocked to see that the labor were striking against my dad and the management. What really shook me that day was that these folks were shouting death slogans against my dad. I knew most of them and was even more shocked when the same folks came home that weekend, had tea with the family and were very courteous with my dad.
My third experience and i tied all of this together is what i learnt from my dad - In a country that not so long ago lost at least 15-20 days in a year to public union strikes, i finally asked my dad to explain labor movement when i was nearing the end of my teen years and on my way to an engineering degree and far away from the life that my dad led. His answer was so enlightening and enriching - he said that unions as did management had issues. As management can be greedy, so can unions. As management can make bone-headed, so can unions. But at the end of the day, the role of managers, management and unions were dynamic and if they worked together and had a healthy balance, companies always progress. If any of the three components overrules the others, the company spends most of the time resolving fights than focused on growth. Unions had a massive role in lifting many of the poor and poverty level people in the country to middle class.
As look at this country today, i believe that there is a mis-match between unions, management and managers. Time for all them to sit down and re-focus and come up with a WIN-WIN-WIN strategy.