Unions and competition....

I am not a big fan of forced unionization. Texas is a right-to-work state, where membership in a union is not required for your job. That being said, I've been a member of a union for 20 years because membership is beneficial to me. Particularly, I have five union funded attorney's who will represent me in legal issues arising out of my employment as a cop. Therefore, the union, in the free market, has sold me their services at a price I'm willing to pay. What a concept!

From Reason, a look at the Janusdecision, a few months after it's taken effect:

Unions Change Their Tune on Janus Supreme Court Ruling

It was the end of the world...until it wasn't.

Steven Greenhut | September 28, 2018

The U.S. Supreme Court is attacking working people by destroying public-sector unions. That's the gist of the argument that the union movement has made as the court considered Janus v. the American Federation of State, Municipal and County Employees (AFSCME). Actually, their arguments were far more overheated, both before and after the high court ruled in June that government employees may not be forced to pay dues to unions—even for collective-bargaining purposes.

"The Janus case is a blatantly political and well-funded plot to use the highest court in the land to further rig the economic rules against everyday working people," intoned a typical statement last year from the American Federation of Teachers, in expectation of the decision. "The billionaire CEOs and corporate interests behind this case, and the politicians who do their bidding, have teamed up to deliver yet another attack on working people."

It wasn't only union officials who made apocalyptic predictions. In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan argued that the decision "will have large-scale consequences." She predicted that "public employee unions will lose a secure source of financial support. State and local governments that thought fair-share provisions furthered their interests will need to find new ways of managing their workforces. Across the country, the relationships of public employees and employers will alter in both predictable and wholly unexpected ways."

Three months after the ruling, however, union supporters have largely changed their tune. In fact, the pro-union website the74million.org argued this week that "Strangely enough, these kinds of apocalyptic predictions have given way to claims that the ruling has had little or no effect on union membership at all." Mike Antonucci concluded that Kagan's warnings may have been wrong. Instead of "wreaking havoc" on contractual relationships dealing with government workers, the main changes have come from union-friendly legislatures that are passing laws designed to mitigate the effects of the ruling. "If governments are designing new ways to manage their workforces, they are keeping it well hidden from view," he argued....

World to end tomorrow, women, children, and minorities hardest hit, got it. The rest of the article is worth the read, but this paragraph says it all:

"...In a January article for the California Policy Center, I wrote, "Even many union officials and their staunchest allies recognize that eliminating mandatory dues could be a boon to unions. It's counterintuitive, but forcing unions to compete for members rather than take their funding for granted will put an end to the complacency that has dogged these noncompetitive institutions." I've also repeatedly warned critics of public-sector unions not to expect the decision to be the death knell for these unions. It's just the beginning of a long process of encouraging unions to focus more on providing benefits rather than on using the political system to achieve their ends...."

You mean the unions are actually cleaning up their act, providing improved/more services for the money, thanks to competition. Who would have thunk of it!