Union membership has declined—a lot—over the past few decades, but it remains
a powerful force in the lives of members. Researchers at Baylor University and the University of Arkansas:
... found that “union members are more satisfied with their lives than those who are not members and that the substantive effect of union membership on life satisfaction is large and rivals other common predictors of quality of life.” [...]
In their study, they tease out four “pathways” by which being a union member might improve quality of life compared with not being a member: “These include having greater satisfaction with one’s experiences while working, feeling greater job security, being afforded numerous opportunities for social interaction and integration, and enhancing the participatory benefits associated with more engaged democratic citizenship.”
It's not just about money, in other words. In fact, as far as the researchers could discover, the effects of union membership on people's happiness are independent of factors like income, education, gender, and more. This makes perfect sense to me. It's good for people to feel connected to each other, like they have a voice and at least a chance of influencing what goes on in their lives. That's what unions are about.
If you find yourself reading this and thinking anything that boils down to "why should they get that when I don't," flip that, please. Or just expand it. "Why shouldn't we all get that?" Decades of corporate battle against unions have worked to divide us, to convince people that they're better off going it on their own. But American workers are not better off than they were when that war began, when a much higher percentage were unionized. That's not the only factor, of course, but it's all part of the same economic landscape. Other research has shown that declining union membership contributes to rising income inequality, even for workers who are not union members.