I just pulled it out of my butt, as you so eloquently put it. Years of studying economics and decades of observing union and non union shops, and the differences in how disputes are handled have convinced me that unions are the wrong answer to the right question, which is "how do we accomplish a better workplace?" The right answer being management's desire to avoid attrition and keep a motivated, productive workforce which will allow the company to change as the market changes. Unions just coerce and obstruct, and tend to feed into the most negative feelings of the biggest complainers, which tend to be the least productive employees anyway. Unions reward sloth and mediocrity, which means long term malaise and death to a company. See Delta and Pan Am and Eastern and...
Maybe if I become informed, instead of vaporing kneejerk opinions, I will become a union guy! If I do, you will be the first to know.