To clarify, I’m not talking about declining industries. I am talking about union membership in non-declining industries. When I was young I was a member of Australia’s tertiary education union (the NTEU), and I really got the sense the union was prioritising the interests of senior staff over what was best for me personally. e.g. opposing performance-based pay, even though I personally was likely to get paid more under it
The aversion of unions to performance based pay always put me off. I think the fear is that management will rig performance metrics to punish union members in general and “troublemakers” in particular, but seniority systems always seem to reward the worst kind of coworkers.