I work for a large private sector union. Unions are not perfect, nothing is, but they are also completely democratic institutions. But, the decline in union m

I work for a large private sector union. Unions are not perfect, nothing is, but they are also completely democratic institutions. But, the decline in union membership does not tell the whole story about the decline of wages in America. I believe the decline in wages and union membership reflects a shift in how people value themselves as human beings, and their relationship to their fellow man. The biggest obstacle to increasing wages to more equitable levels comes from the mentality: "At least I have a job", "I will be rich someday", "I can make it on my own", "I'm only going to work here for a year". These thoughts are what has allowed wages to be pushed to their lowest levels in recent history without any push-back from the work force. Unions at their core are nothing more than a group of workers who get together to negotiate a contract and are willing to take action to force the employer to sit down and negotiate. This used to be understood, but at some point unions became viewed as some sort of "servicing" entity that drew its powers from a mysterious legal paper. Members forgot that the union was THEM. Thankfully, the labor movement is starting reverse course from decades of this mentality. The truth is that, the only power which workers (unionized or not) have is to withhold labor in a coordinated manner. Contracts are meaningless without the power of a strike. Without workers being willing to all withhold labor together, union or not, wages will continue to decline until a moral crisis is reached. Sorry, that was a bit of a ramble, but "unions" are just groups of workers who have a 501(c)(5) paper with IRS that allows them pool money together to organize.