>>714083940Unions in America are unironic mafia groups.
If you join a Union and they teach you ANYTHING, you NEED to listen to what they say or they're legally able to sue you.
So in the VA Union, if you joined then you were forced to adhere to their list of "approved jobs".
If you didn't join, the Union would then apply pressure to every group that had significant roles by removing them from the "approved jobs" list.
So basically the whole point of this shit wasn't that they weren't being paid appropriately, but like you said: They wanted to be paid more.