Unions have had their place, there is no denying it. Outside of government unions, unions have been most wide spread in heavy industry. Government, the supposed friend of union workers, has greatly weakened heavy industry in this country. In the late 1990's government pushed a service economy and that is the very kind of jobs that are not, in general, union jobs.
Not only do workers in steel, coal, oil, teamsters, and manufacturing make more than many service jobs, but the are the kind of jobs where a young man right out of school can walk into a company and work up, even with just a high school education and a lot of energy and smarts.
Many of the 1 per cent that is so disliked by liberals didn't start out that way. Yes, there were the Rockefellers and so on, and there fight have been a few Jed Clampetts who have oil bumble up in his back 40, but the majority of the rich went broke a couple of times before they hit the big time or at least came up with something that nobody else did.