In my experience, partially. Although I am willing to acknowledge that conditions will certainly vary from union to union and even between locals. In my experie

In my experience, partially. Although I am willing to acknowledge that conditions will certainly vary from union to union and even between locals. In my experience, they add an additional layer of bureaucracy and significant cost to an organisation. They /may/ improve /some/ conditions for some workers. But they will also likely introduce other problems that affect all workers and disproportionately impact the top-performing workers to the benefit of the least performing. As has been noted, this isn't necessarily a problem with unions as a concept, but rather a problem with human nature and adding an additional layer of bureaucracy on top of another bureaucracy with conflicting interests. It will at the very least slow things down and add cost. Whether that is worthwhile probably needs a case by case analysis.