Unions provide a lot of bargaining power and I've benefitted from all of them, health care, good retirement and a "call back list" that lets you float around to suit your needs from company to company, keeping all your benefit package within the union. A lot of construction shops are signatory to a local union but differ slightly or greatly in what they provide the market. Say, a sheetmetal worker that installs hvac commercially and a sheetmetal worker that hangs panel siding on a skyscraper.
The downside is corruption, there's a large pool of money wrapped up in a few areas within any local union. That has influence where it may not be in your best interests, but the union always has a political bias, and a member is assumed to comply....I rarely did.
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