As I constantly point out, this site is about democratizing the workplace, and on this topic, unions are one of the most familiar and institutionally-strongest means of collective worker action and voicing-of-concerns. The TL;DR is that when workers want to take collective action, they form a union - this could be independently built, or chartered from a larger union. Workers elect representatives, and hearing workers concerns, may call strikes and negotiate. Because the union, by definition, shows that a large chunk of the workers at a site will act in each other's collective interest, the boss can't just fire union workers for no good reason, or they'll go on strike. When a union goes on strike, the representatives negotiate with the bosses, and then workers can decide if they are happy with the deal (end the strike) or not (continue it). Unions are great for cultivating worker power. And large unions, using their size, are supposed to be good at organizing local union formation, as well as coordinating worker solidarity across regions and sectors; what's good for one X is good for all X kind of thing (X = janitor, nurse, autoworker, journalist, etc.). Collective action wins workers not just increased wages, but better hours, more day-to-day stability (for example: teachers knowing their class schedule a few months ahead, instead of next week), benefits, and so on - it's not just wages, but making work tolerable, even nice. Today's unions aren't perfect, and we'll even examine the main criticisms. Regardless, they provide an infrastructure to developing worker action, and have served workers well. Let's break it down.
Unions have very specific connotations in culture, but the idea behind them isn't just about economics, wages, etc. To understand how unions operate, imagine we lived in a dictatorship - for some people today, this is still a reality. This means one person calls all of the shots, and they have a right to everything you do/make for the country. Just to make it easy on the imagination, suppose our hypothetical country is the size of a county (like feudalism!). One way to stand up to the dictatorship is for the people to collectively say 'we're not going to work and give value to our country unless you meet certain demands'. To actualize this threat, the citizens decide on some representatives to represent them, and they negotiate with the dictator, and hear the concerns of the citizens. This process of collectively deciding to take action, and to have representives act as intermediaries, is unionization.
If things get too bad for the citizens (taxed too much and not even good public utilities, can't keep enough of their food, don't get paid well, being brutalized and their constitutions trampled, etc.), the representatives ask the dictator to address these concerns. If the dictator doesn't do so satisfactorily, the union representatives call a strike, and the citizens stop working in the country (when this happens today, this is called a general strike). The dictator NEEDS this to stop, because the dictator needs food to keep being produced, factories to keep running, etc., to keep up trade relations with other countries. This is the leverage unions bring to the bargaining table. The dictator can choose to brutally crackdown on the strikers - it happens - but that can't always work, and unionizing has won working class a lot of great things - child labor laws, the weekend, the 40 hour week, minimum wage, etc. To see, replace 'country' with 'company', 'dictator' with 'CEO/board/capitalists', and 'citizens' with 'workers'. Important to note is that this isn't a democracy - there is still a dictator. Instead, some form of proto-democracy is bootstrapped by forcing the dictator to listen to the citizen's demands, or else they will strike.
In a way, unionizing and collective action is kind of like the Magna Carta era of feudalism. Barons got together, told the king that he was up to some bullshit, and forced him to sign the Magna Carta, or else there wouldn't be peace. Of course, rebel barons have a lot more institutional power than working class people, so the analogy is pretty weird, but it's a decent analogy - I think - don't kill me haha.
Generally speaking, the very basic hopes are that when the workers are overworked, treated poorly, expect to be on call all of the time, not being paid enough, etc., or when something bad happens, they can act collectively to demand fixes for these things. The problem is, if you do this alone, or with weak organization, the company can divide-and-conquer. They can fire you, demote you, etc. for organizing, since you've shown that you want to try and organize. Companies generally don't like this (see all of Amazon's efforts in Bessemmer) because, drum roll, collective action is basically five dominos away from a corporate Magna Carta - the King is no longer the only one calling the shots. So it's a bit of a catch 22 for workers - start something, and get fired (and live like shit), don't start something, and live like shit. So what to do?
Unionize (but do so correctly). What a Union does is (A) help organize the organizing, (B) provide large-scale solidarity between different facilities and sites across the region/nation that face similar problems, and (C) facilitate negotiations for the workers. Also (D) provide someone you can come to with problems. If your employer does you wrong, you can trust the union is an entity you can spill the beans to. Unionizing can involve some people who are from outside of your work site, but they are always people from and representing workplaces like your own. The 'union' is not some outside bogeyman (and sometimes it's even entirely local to one work site), you the worker are part of the union - hence the word 'union'. Unions are about having a voice in your workplace, how its run, and your fair treatment as part of the workplace.
The main key here to avoid the main problems of contemporary unions, if you are not yet organized, is to organize with a good union. But let's dig in a bit. The big problem is that the democratic element of many establishment unions is sometimes a bit tenuous (ie workers vote against a deal, yet the union leadership still green lights it); this often results from not focusing on the workers as their own liberators, as their own advocates, and relying on other tactics besides the strike - the results are often less good than would be won from a strike, disillusioning for workers, and undermines the cultural power of unions. Also, unions often fail to leverage their connections across many sites of work to bring working people together, striking in support of one another; for example, MNA failing to call for strikes amongst the nurses it represents in solidarity with St. Vincent nurses (this criticism has some drawbacks, such as the possible legal issues with this). All of these are worthy criticisms to make, but they are far from criticisms of the nature of unions, or even their effectiveness in fighting for their workers.
All of this is to say that unions are still powerful vehicles for worker organization, they only limit themselves in how far they can go. There are very bad criticisms of unions, mind you, the worst one being that 'labor has changed', and now workers 'want' to do gig work, and somehow unions want to come in and call everyone workers (how dare they!). No, 'gig work' (in its current economic-political meaning, at least) is just branding forms of employment which give the worker less rights. You can put make-up on a pig, but it's still a pig. 'Gig work' is another word for 'labor without the residual worker rights of the FDR era that survived Reaganomics and neoliberalism'.
There's a lot to go back and forth with here, but my main point is we want to democratize the workplace, and unions provide secure and reliable paths to getting a proto-democratic workplace. Going forward requires reforming unions, and organizing under good unions, as union action should always require rank-and-file voting. Furthermore, Unions provide a clear vehicle to unite workers across different worksites. For workers that haven't quite developed the class awareness, but realize that something is wrong, something is unfair about their workplace, but have a hard time articulating this unease, unions are great. Organizing, educating, negotiating - all of this can be incredibly exhausting for already-tired workers, especially if they aren't familiar with all of the ins-and-outs. Unions help with this. They provide a vehicle for collective worker action which is still getting its sea legs (and can be, and has been, a long term strategy).
"Shop around for the right union. I say in 'A Collective Bargain' (one of her books), if you call a union and to say 'I want to form a union', the first thing I would ask, the very first thing I would ask if I was a worker with a group of workers, 'we've done some self-organizing, we've gotten this far, now we know we're gonna need some more resources cause we're thinking a union buster is gonna come in', the first thing I would say to a union is 'put me in touch with a bunch of other workers who are already in your union so we have an independent conversation with them about how they experience their organization'. And if that union says to you 'that's really not how things work here', or 'that's hard to do', just hang up, seriously. Cause in a good union, the first thing the organization would do is be like 'oh, hang on - why don't you get in touch with these workers who are already part of the union and let them explain to you how they did it and how it works'. That's a good sign of a union. Don't just pick any union - shop around. And you will probably need resources, because it is crazy how many obstacles get thrown in the path of well-intentioned workers who wanna form a union." - Jane McAlevey
"It’s harder to unionize when you don’t have that history. When the UMWA was formed it took blood. It took literally a war to start the united mine workers. It’s so hard to start a union. So it’s real hard to do what the Amazon workers are doing. We’re fighting, but we already have a union. We are already united. Those guys are fighting Amazon. Amazon. It’s like they’re fighting the world. But I know we have to unite the working class. Standing together we are stronger. Amazon, mine workers, all the workers. It would be a good start for America. Corporations are dividing us. In the end, they make lots of money off us. If we stand together, maybe we can start to change it." - striking Warrior Met Coal miner in Alabama, 2021, after the miners rejected a lousy deal [1]
"The boss is getting $30,000 bonuses. He’s not running the mine. He’s not going up and down the mine. It’s high time we stood up and said, we’re not going to be pushed around. You hear the boss about the new house on a lake. How did you get that? Oh yeah, I run coal for you. It’s time we stand up and say we aren’t gonna take this." - striking Warrior Met Coal miner in Alabama, 2021, after the miners rejected a lousy deal [1]