&gt; But there&#x27;s a good chance your grandfather had the cojones to join a union to fight for better working conditions.<p>Sure, there&#x27;s a good chance: if he was white and middle-class, a statistically decent bet on this website. But otherwise there&#x27;s a better chance your grandfather was <i>deprived</i> of a decent job by a union, so that the union members could earn more (at the expense of the hypothetical grandfather <i>and</i> the employer <i>and</i> its customers.)<p>Which isn&#x27;t to diminish the part about fighting for better working conditions, mind you, which was real enough... but just to point out the <i>checkered</i> nature of this history.