We had some excellent products {in the mid 60s} and when I asked my manager why our delivery times were 2 to 3 times longer than our competition, he said our production facilities and schedules were controlled because they were union.
I left the company and never regretted it.
Unions are a major cause of what ails this country.
There was a time when some in the USW had a clause {piece work} which allowed merit pay based on productivity.
They soon found that this showed how much the better worker could make and how the lazy, sleepy, drunken bum was shown to be a lazy, sleepy, drunken bum.
They first put the strong arm on the better workers, trying to slow them down, and when that didn't work, they "claimed that management screwed the working man" by "taking away" the merit based pay.
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Unions are communistic in their design.
That reflects my experience.
Before I went to college, I was a roofer. We had a small crew — fast, efficient, exceedingly professional. We worked very hard, got the job done quickly and the customer was always happy.
Most of us were hired for a project roofing the homes of a large US Air Force base. This was our first union job.
We began by working at our normal pace, but were admonished by the old union hands that we were “working yourselves out of a job.” The pace was slow — deliberately held back by the old union hands who made it their business to milk the contract as long as possible. Of course, this was a public contract and the losers were the taxpayers, but that was of no interest to them.