The point about nuance is an important one, and as a person raised in a region where people either worked in factories or the coal mines and/or farmed for themselves, I've always been very pro-union (and pro-Democrat, FWIW). Everyone who worked "out" (i.e., for a paycheck) in my family as far back as I know has been not only a union member but very active in their unions. Some of my very earliest memories are of walking picket lines with my parents!
When Mom and Dad worked on the production floor at Decca Records in the 1950s, they were both in the AFL-CIO. Before and after that, Mom worked in the garment sweatshops and was in the ILGWU; Dad went to a major magazine printing factory and was part of the Bookbinders union. Most of the rest of the family and people in our area worked in the strip mines and were in the United Mine Workers. In all of those cases, there wasn't internal "freeloading" to any real degree, because back then, the unions insisted on their members pulling their weight and rewarded such by a system of higher pay/incentives for going beyond that minimum--the "do only what's required" people could do that, and be happy at the base rate, but those who wanted better money, the ability to bid on jobs or shifts, and so on, had mechanisms for getting those. Those who didn't pull their weight were subject to firing, with the unions' blessing.
It's just part of my DNA to be pro-union because that was the default in my childhood but also because, as I got older, I quickly made the lived connections between union membership and social justice/human rights. My people were lucky in that our experience of unionism had some teeth to it, and that often extended into issues of worker safety, equal treatment for blacks and whites, and of men and women, and so on. Certainly, the UMWA had its problems during those times nationally, but the various locals in our part of the country were pretty clean overall; if a member was wronged by management (usually in terms of dangerous duty or sloppy safety management) though, they'd wildcat at the drop of a hat.
In our area, while the plant and mine managers and owners were overwhelmingly Republicans, there was a pretty decent level of willingness to negotiate in good faith with the unions. By the 1970s, there were a few notable exceptions (I do remember a months-long UMW strike set off by one local, and all the others went out and stayed out in sympathy--and I know lots of cousins who walked picket lines with pistols and shotguns after the mines hired security forces who beat a couple dozen strikers). Of course, in the ensuing years the factories have closed and the mines have stopped working, and unemployment has always been in the low-mid teens range as a result.
I didn't intend to hijack the thread, but it IS interesting how different people interpret and experience the concept of "unions." (It also reminds me, yet again, just how far out of my league I am in academia, having come from such a different background than many/most here and at large.)
For the record, I'm still a staunch member (and occasional rabble-rouser) of my faculty union, despite our current leadership being pretty toothless. If nothing else, the potential legal aid my dues provide me are worth the cost of membership.
