Canada’s unions are too big. Instead of many small unions who support each other with coordinated strikes, we’ve got unions so large that the union itself has become a corporation with employees who are unionized separately.

All of those people being paid out of union dues from the guy stocking shelves in Foodland or equivalent.

They now have their own agendas, and as often as not they’re not doing what they were supposed to do - protect workers from exploitation.

I’ve heard of unions grieving cases where an employee was dismissed with cause for gross negligence where he put other workers in harm’s way, another where the employee claimed on their pay sheet “union business” for personal days used for hobby certifications, and worse. A friend of mine is in a union where they negotiated a collective agreement that stipulates the company doesn’t promote based on merit or performance, but simply on seniority. It’s resulted in a lot of unqualified or otherwise shitty people making the rest do their jobs for them.

As a non-union employee in a company where the conditions are non-exploitative, I would be completely unwilling to join a union today.