I had this naive image in mind that unions are labor activists mobilizing against exploitative corporate practices. What I witnessed opened my eyes to the realities on ground, that seemed like almost opposite. As usual, life is more complicated!

* The objective of trade unions is not to protect workers and improve their conditions (at least directly). It’s to protect themselves.

* In every organization, there exists people with diverse attributes: capabilities, attitudes towards work/life, etc. There are always people who don’t want to or can’t work; and guess what they do? They join unions to protect themselves. Over time union center became international house of suckers and weirdos, each worse than the other.

* In an effort to protect themselves, unions politicized the work environment. They put themselves everywhere in key committees, including a union committee having last word on hirings and firings. That made them unfirable. They exploited the coronavirus situation, to blame employers and opponents. A scientific project can become a playground for union politics. I believe in climate change, but not in politicizing it. They seize every opportunity to attack employers and those not aligned with them. The goal is to use any chance to perpetuate an image that they protect people.

* Union will plot against any excellence in organization. To minimize contrast, they work hard to fail good people and projects around, or portray them as worker-abusers (ie, the reason that they succeed is because they abuse people).

* Unions will fiercely defend status quo and do not allow any constructive reform. The area of specialty that they advertised for themselves was an ancient technology from 1980s (and even that they wouldn’t do it). Every time people suggested to reform the department activities, they refused the proposals. You may not believe it, but department told them, OK, you can keep doing your own activities, we don’t reform them, but other people can start projects in orthogonal directions not related to yours. They still refused (they didn’t want competition) and basically forced everyone to work on their ancient advertised area of activity.

* Union engaged in all sorts of abusive practices. It was disgusting to see a lot of them rarely showed up at work (which was strange considering that they put themselves in various committees). I asked a department manager (“responsable”) how come this or that guy shows up at work only few times a year. He said, if you are a known member of union you can do that, and this is an issue in France. They yell, and bully people, create a toxic environment for others, repel and fire those not blending in etc,

* Union members felt very entitled and justified their actions by making themselves believe a skewed view of the world. They felt that they are entitled to a life even with ZERO work, and world owes to them.

* Unions will be perpetually on strike. What makes you think they will be happy with a laid back 9-5 job with decent pay and great benefits? Even with no work, they still go on strikes. They take tax money from society with little contribution, and make your commute and life periodically miserable.

* Unions are especially problematic in public sector, where incentives are aligned with cronyism not meritocracy. A lot of people are hired who lack abilities to perform the work in question. They form large powerful unions.

Don’t get me wrong. There might be a place for “traditional” textbook unions. But I don’t know if it ever works in practice. My experience was negative and counterintuitive.