Bit of hyperbole there Spook. Many people who have had a job on the last 100 years can also thank those entrepreneurs and business owners who risked their own capital to create and grow those businesses.Weekends, public holidays, four weeks holiday pay, leave loading, long service leave, parental leave, superannuation, health and safety protocols, sick days, smoko. And let's not forget the aqueducts.
Everyone who's had a job in the last hundred years can thank their union forebears.
Of course there has to be a balance and there are bad eggs, grifters and bullies just as there are in any power structure. But strong unions with strong ethical leadership are crucial to maintaining the balance between capital and labour. Unfortunately some of the bad ones make it all too easy for the minions of capital to demonise them.
That doesn’t make all businesses today ethical or moral, and nor do the benefits created by unions in the past make them ethical and effective organisations today.
My history is one of strong support for the Union movement in my early working days but unfortunately I have rarely seen the strong ethical leadership you refer to in recent years.
But despite all that imo workers should have the right to decide who represents them with their employers.