Unions protect us from the company, sometimes from each other, and sometimes from ourselves. Freeloaders fall into all of those categories many times.
Route66 would have us believe the choice is getting our current contractual package and paying dues, or our current contractual package and not paying dues. That's wrong.
The choice is between protection (admittedly sometimes flawed) and (almost) no protection. We'd be "at will" employees trying to negotiate individual contracts, and that has never worked out well for the vast majority of labor. The powers behind the RTW movement are the new Frank Lorenzo's of the world. Read "Flying the Line" 1 & 2. They're good reminders of where we've been, and how we got where we are today.