>I believe because the unions have an interest in increasing their membership, not letting it atrophy and decrease due to time and deaths. It really depends. T

>I believe because the unions have an interest in increasing their membership, not letting it atrophy and decrease due to time and deaths. It really depends. The smaller the organizing unit, the more short-sighted they're going to be because they have less leverage and they benefit less from long-term big picture thinking. For example, if I'm a union that organizes machinists specializing in a specific type of tool then my focus is going to be on keeping this tool in place and these machinists employed, even if it's at the expense of new entrants or generational changes in technology. If the union is organized for an entire industrial sector, though, then their focus is on organizing and developing labor rights and practices for the sector as a whole rather than any specific shop.