Who Brought You the Weekend. Unions did not lead the way for the 40-hour work week, minimum wage, health coverage, Social Security, pensions, Medicare and workplace safety in a vacuum. We know from experience that we cannot tend to our knitting and expect benevolent counterparts in the management world to maintain worker benefits. In fact, all the benefits I have just mentioned are under constant attack in Congress and the Texas Legislature. You do not make policy in this or any other lifetime without focused, sustained political activity.
Corporations do politics all the time, using shareholder money without individual permission.
Unlike corporations, labor unions operate by majority votes. Other non-profit advocacy groups of all stripes use dues money all the time for political purposes. The idea that union members who dissent are entitled to an expensive opt-out process subverts the will of the majority in a way that occurs nowhere else in a democracy. Texas union members join up voluntarily and are free to leave for any reason. But because of the economic benefits of union membership, few resign.