Gotta jump in here, being a card carrying union member. They've been steadily raising our union dues over the 10+ years I've been working at my current job, (close to $700 a year now), and have yet to fight for a pay scale increase since I've been a member.

A year ago, the union submitted a grievance over the fact that our company was hiring too many temps. They went to arbitration and won a hefty amount, then turned around and only gave the award money to the top 5% of the union members by seniority. In our company that meant about 6 guys, (4 of them union reps), got an extra 500+ in their checks, and the rest got zip.

Also, saying you have the freedom not to join the union is a joke. You have three choices, (in PA at least). Join the union, pay dues: Don't join the union, pay dues; Don't join the union, don't pay dues but pay the equivalent of the dues to a charity of the union's choice and in the unions name. Freedom eh? It's a lawyered way around the closed shop.

Unions are scumbags just like the rest. We do get a slightly better smelling lump of shit than we do without them, but only slightly. There has got to be a better way.

Power in politics and the economy is violence. This nonsense at the beginning about how these protesters are totally wrong for hitting the douche-bag is completely blind to the reality of how power is used to solve political/economic disputes.

If students, in a completely symbolic act of opposition march on a university, they get beaten with clubs and attacked with chemical weapons. The people who support them decry the violence, the people who oppose them say they got what they asked for. No action is taken to reduce the disproportionate response by those in power. That's what happens on one side of the class war.

Conversely in a symbolic act of douchebagary some guy walks into a crowd of pissed off people and starts harassing them, with the explicit intent of getting his ass kicked. In this case a few of the protesters, in a non-coordinated fashion throw a couple punches, and other protesters intervene to break it up. Not only do the proponents of said douchbag claim that this somehow proves he is correct about how bad the protesters position is, but the supporters of the protesters also get their undergarments tied in knots expressing their disapproval. This is how the losing side in the class war decides to unilaterally disarm, so don't wonder why we are where we are.

Unions always come to power with the force of violence as a tool, just as workers are always subjugated to power elietes with violence as a tool, to pretend that one side in these disputes somehow has an obligation to be more "civilized", when being so means losing, is to buy hook line and sinker, the propaganda of their opponents.

It would be nice if these disputes could be handled peacefully, but the power elites of the world have learned from the passive resistance movements of the past, and immunized our society from the future use of non-violent civil disobedience. The only thing left is clubs in the street. The only question is if the protesters will have them as well as the police.

@Enzoblue

Like in any democracy, in a union , you get the representation you organize/vote for. Many Democracies are bad, I would even accept that most are. None the less, given the choice between a poorly lead union, where the workers can replace the union leaders, and an un-mediated well lead employer(tyranny), where the leader can be replaced at random by fate/the market, I choose the first.