As for unions...
I don't believe for a second that, generally speaking, unions drag companies down. A lot of companies that have unions bitch about how the unions are costing some outrageous number of cost...but, the companies still manage to turn out millions, if not billions, in profits.
Even though businesses with unions that did tank, such as some of the automotive companies, didn't tank because of unions. Rather, they tanked because of poor business decisions. The US auto manufactuerers were pumping out millions of gas-guzzling SUVs leading up the explosion of gas prices. Their lack of foresight, and the momentum of manufacturing, buried them. The execs were pretty damn quick to blame the unions, though. The unions didn't take pay cuts, but the auto companies are now turning a profit. What saved those companies was the government keeping them afloat through their poor business decisions. If the unions were what was really killing those companies, they'd still be dying.
Then there's the Hostess failure. The company blamed the closing of the company on the unions because they wouldn't take pay cuts. The execs mismanaged the company into the ground and then wanted the workers to take a pay cut for it. And this was while the CEO gave himself a
over a 300% pay increase -- from $750,000 to $2,550,000.
Are unions really
the -- or
a -- problem? Hell no.