At root of your statement are the American oddities in how employment is conducted. The 49 states which permit at-will employment baffle people in every other industrialized country, and many developing countries, used to working under contracted conditions.
As in, they sign a contract that define the terms of employment, including why one can be terminated. No making up facetious reasons like employers do stateside.
Workers in union shops can choose to not be members, despite losing protections such as Weingarten rights, clear rules on pay (union workers not only make more money, generally speaking, but their fringe benefits (e.g. health insurance, sick leave, retirement/pensions) are much better than non-union counterparts).
The truth behind antiunionization in the US rests on two intertwined causes: the apocalyptic, white, primarily Southern anabaptist churches being coöpted during the New Deal to preach that being rich and wanting to be rich was not against the teachings of Jesus — the same Jesus who got proper angry at a market and moneychangers in front of the temple (Mark 11:15–19, Matthew 21:12–17, Luke 19:45–48, John 2:13–16 — something important enough to be in all four, you’d think, would be clear), the same Jesus that said that Heaven involved being unburdened in this life by material goods (Matthew 19:23-26, Mark 10:24-27, Luke 18:24-27). The New Deal era was marked by wage stagnation to protect the economy rendered fragile by hoarders of capital. The general public was properly pissed at the bankers, brokers, and other conmen who existed to push fictions to each other and claim wealth was made from thin air rather than from the industry of hard working people. Through religion, the rich who stayed rich convinced folks that money wasn’t the root of the evils they were experiencing, that up was down, that day was night.
(Ironically, had things gone better there wouldn’t have been a debate over Romneycare in DC in 2010 because FDR proposed a national, single payer health care program in the 1930s as part of Social Security. Moneyed interests convinced the White House that they needed to be able to offer health benefits as an enticement for employees absent wage flexibility.)
Unions were segregated until the civil rights era. 1955 marks the start of declines of union membership. I’m trying to think of what else happened in 1955 in the US connected to civil rights and racism and I think there was this lady who got on a bus or something and made racist whites angry.
The narrative that’s been spun to most people is by the rich, to the benefit of the rich. The easiest people to control are people at each other’s throats out of irrational fear rather than unifying and going after the people planting the fears.
