Either you're lying or you're working with a very low-skilled pool of workers.
My Dad was a skilled union worker his whole life and I can tell you for a fact that our family had medical insurance, dental insurance, vacations, etc because of unions. Comparable non-union, jobs to what my Dad did were always for less pay and less benefits.
Can you prove that if your dad was not in a union that he wouldn't have had those benefits anyway?
Besides that, you obviously haven't worked in industrial jobs much yourself in the past 15-20 years. I realize I didn't make it clear above, as I was not really talking directly about the unions in that particular post. But I never meant that people in unionized jobs don't get any benefits at all. And I wasn't talking about actual "health insurance" benefits. What I meant was that unions in America rarely get their constituents anything more than the companies would offer anyway. Competition for talent has been steep, and most companies provide solid benefits and decent pay as a means to compete. The company I work for now just went through a salary restructuring, raising the pay of warehouse workers $2 an hour across the board, even in the down economy when we have tons of applicants. This is because many people are turning to education or other industries to find work as the going gets tough. So we need to offer a solid benefits/pay package to acquire and retain talent.
We are also seeing large companies moving plants out of the country or even state to state, partly to avoid the impact unions have on the bottom line. I am familiar with the situation Cummins Diesel Engines is in and I know of at least one plant that organized under a union about 6 years ago. The benefits actually got worse and the pay structure changed so, yes, immediately all got a raise, but the raises after that came less frequently than management had already planned for their budgete salary. It was also one of the first plants to experience the layoff as part of their 20% worldwide reduction in force 3 years ago. It was just too costly to operate so the lower-profit plants go first. Obviously all costs were not the labor pool, but labor is the single largest cost category on most industrial companies' budgets.
Everyone seem to view companies as evil but that is where the jobs come from. Companies pay the wages that drive the economy. And when profits are scarce and wages are at risk, unions do not help matters. Especially when some unions are raising dues to provide more money for their leadership right when financial situations for those paying the dues are getting worse. Anymore the unions just do not have the best interest of the workers in mind. And yes union leaders typically make a ton of money off the dues of the workers. I have talked to people in the industrial sector who tried to actually negotiate lower dues to help retain employees and the union walked out of the negotiations. They did not want to cut into their 6-figure salaries.
I just think the day and age of unions has come and gone. There was a time when they were necessary to provide a decent working environment and salary for workers. Anymore that is forced by competition. Right now in America I think unions do more harm than good.
By the way, take a guess the percentage of all workers in unions today then click on this link. It might surprise you.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm