re: Who here is in a union? Do you feel it helps or hurts?

I’m not, however my work group is actively trying to organize (well some of them). I hope we do not vote them in.

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being forced by employers to pay union dues

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You are out of your fricking mind if you think any employer wants you to be a part of a union

I work at a university where we have union and non-union staff. It creates a major divide and is a management nightmare. It's definitely tilted me toward the anti-union side of the ledger.

When my union staff member left, to get another union person to pick up a little slack (process expenses on about 10 transactions a month) took endless emails and several months of discussion, so we gave up on that and someone else volunteered to do it. All that for about one hour of work per month.

To top it off, the fringe costs to our employer are 30% on top of non-union salaries and 60% on top of union salaries.

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I pay 5% of my check and 43 a month.

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Did I read that right you pay the union 5% of you paycheck

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This country was built on unions

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While somewhat true, pressuring politicians to create favorable workplace laws is what happened. The laws are there now, the regulations are deep, and we don’t need unions for that anymore. In my case of being a union worker for over a decade, it seemed toothless and counter productive 90% of the time, and union leadership did very little in reality while being more concerned with merging with other unions and holding places of bullshite power. A lot like politicians.

Union member for over 15 years now. Fully vested pension, PPO family insurance I've literally never had a paycheck deduction for, $500 deductible. Negotiated salary increases (on top of COLA) I wanna say have been 12% in the past six years. Not bad.

Never had to use their legal representation because I'm not an idiot

On the whole, it's been a pretty positive experience I'd say. I've never seen the union wage war for shite employees (contrary to popular opinion); the only time they really went to the mat involved obvious nepotism.

Unions are like any other formal institution. Formed for a good and necessary cause, they will eventually be taken over by the corrupt. Why? Because greed is a more powerful incentive than philanthropy.

Not all Unions are the same. The strength of a Union is it’s membership. I was in one for 40 years. Our Union did not offer a retirement like some. You learn from living. I knew nothing aboutUnions until I worked in one.

Worked both sides of the fence, union was way better in treating employees. If I had stayed with the 401k on the non union side I would be getting 1K less than my current union pension, plus 50% of would have come out of my wages. Union offers free school, guaranteed raises, paid ins., pension, all paid for by the employer.
Happy and retired!
Local 198 BR

Unions are a for-profit organization, if that tells you anything.