I worked for ~2 years as a contractor for a government entity in Canada. ~3500 headcount of employees. What I observed there was sickening. This was a place that had white-collar unions for all non-management employees. This union had completely hijacked the mission of this institution. It was no longer about serving the people that this entity was created to serve, but rather to protect the union and its contributors.
The software we were in charge of writing had direct, material impact on the physical and mental well beings of people in the province. Life and death. And at times I saw things like a deployment of features being delayed by weeks/months because a union member who was responsible for _manually_ deploying the changes was on vacation. To automate that deployment meant automating a union employees job and was impossible. These features directly served the needs of people that were in critical need of them.
On the other hand, I have family friends who work for UPS and other delivery services and see the brutal toll it takes on their body and mind. Pushed to absolute limits and exploited because they don't have a union.
But to me, it seems unions can and often do exploit people. After witnessing all of this I've developed a very dim view of humanity. We all just want to exploit someone.