As someone who is a Catholic first and politically more conservative second, the question of Unions is pretty interesting. Catholic teaching says that in princ

As someone who is a Catholic first and politically more conservative second, the question of Unions is pretty interesting. Catholic teaching says that in principle, unions can do a lot of good, see for example: > The most important of all [voluntary associations] are workingmen's unions, for these virtually include all the rest. History attests what excellent results were brought about by the artificers' guilds of olden times. They were the means of affording not only many advantages to the workmen, but in no small degree of promoting the advancement of art, as numerous monuments remain to bear witness... (http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/docume..., > Among the basic rights of the human person is to be numbered the right of freely founding unions for working people. These should be able truly to represent them and to contribute to the organizing of economic life in the right way. Included is the right of freely taking part in the activity of these unions without risk of reprisal. Through this orderly participation joined to progressive economic and social formation, all will grow day by day in the awareness of their own function and responsibility, and thus they will be brought to feel that they are comrades in the whole task of economic development and in the attainment of the universal common good according to their capacities and aptitudes. (http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_counc...) When I read those descriptions, and compare that to either the limited experience I had working for a company that was largely unionized or the stories that I've heard or read about, I'm not sure how often these apply outside of a few genuinely dangerous occupations. See as one example how some unions have argued that union jobs should be exempted from minimum wage laws (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/12/los-angeles-15-dollar-minimum-wage-unions https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/12/los-angeles-..., https://www.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/documents/files/_final_report_labors_minimum_wage_exemption.pdf https://www.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/documents/file..., https://padailypost.com/2018/04/02/minimum-wage-law-includes-loophole-unions/ https://padailypost.com/2018/04/02/minimum-wage-law-includes...). Evidently, unions see an opportunity to grow their market share by lowering their prices (i.e., wages of labor), and do so by lobbying Congress from exemptions from law, which is the very thing that they claim corporations are evil for doing and that we need unions to exist in order to stop. The argument is that unions are able to negotiate better benefits, but they don't argue for an exemption from minimum wage if the employer provides a certain level of benefits, they argue for an exemption specifically for using unionized labor. Are there good unions and good union leaders out there? Sure, but I think this example shows that unions in themselves do not advance the "whole task of economic development and in the attainment of the universal common good," but are instead subject to incentives and respond to them the way any other organization does, and very often the incentives of the union leadership is different than those doing the actual work.