Monopolistic organizations of all kinds tend to be bad. The corporate monopolies are frowned upon and at least in theory, and sometimes in practice, curbed by t

Monopolistic organizations of all kinds tend to be bad. The corporate monopolies are frowned upon and at least in theory, and sometimes in practice, curbed by the government. Union monopolies are actively protected by the government. If the unions operated more like competing guilds with low barrier to entry and anti-monopoly rules similar to corporations, and rules were e.g. you can only hire factory workers from a union but there are 5 competing unions in town, there could be an argument for their usefulness. As such they are about as evil (especially in the public sector where there's no competition pretty much by definition) as if e.g. Google had legal monopoly on internet search. Or Exxon had legal monopoly on oil production and unquestioning government support.