Blanket statements like that are just idiotic propaganda. Is it true there are corrupt scumbag unions? You bet, humanity is full of scumbags in leadership positions because we want to believe what they tell us, and we want easy money, and that's what it takes to become a leader in our society, promise people easy money. This is regardless if it's a union exec, a corporate exec, or the Chief Exec, the POTUS. We get the leadership that we desire.
So faulting the unions is just a cop out to blame someone else for problems that we contribute to. Blame is our way of avoiding personal responsibility, and rationalizing to ourselves our own breeches of conscience.
There are good unions out there, and there are companies that willingly contract with those unions because they provide a value to the company. I belong to a three seafarers unions. 2 of the 3 I have no problems paying dues to, because they give me access to the training facilities that allow me to do all my recurrent and continuing ED stuff which if I had to pay for as an independent would have a significant cost. The companies like using them because they relieve the companies of the burden of tracking qualifications and finding qualified people on a moment's notice, plus they handle all the insurance issues, and SIU and AMO both have excellent benefit and health plans. One boss is an old captain and his intent is to provide a system that creates real value and makes the industry work better.
Intent is why things work well or not. If the intent behind the organization is to rake in all the cash you can, your organization will produce those results because that is what the actions of the method you choose to optimize for that result will return. If your intent is to improve the system adding value and getting paid from the value added, then you will see a positive over all result because you went at it with a positive intent, and that affects the choices of actions we take.