What are your personal experiences with unions?

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There have been a lot of battles going on in various states over union powers or union "rights" as those who support them say. People support and oppose unions for various reasons, but I wonder how many people actually have personal experience with unions and what those experiences are. Personally, I have never been a member of a union until 2010. Florida was a right to work state so I was never forced to be in one there. In the library I worked at in Orlando only the librarians were unionized, while other employees were not. The union made sure that librarians were not asked to do any work outside of their job description. They also made sure that librarians got raises based on a schedule and not on merit. Other employees got performance evaluations that determined their raises. Since I worked hard and got good evaluations, I was glad that I was NOT in a union. I had excellent benefits, although insurance for my wife and I was a bit pricey ($168 per biweekly paycheck, which went up to $192 when they raised the rates in 2007). There was a union when I worked for the Miami-Dade County Library System as well. I chose not to be a member and, by law, they can not force me to be a member. They require written authorization the deduct dues. The only thing I ever saw the union do there was make sure that incompetent employees kept their jobs. We had a guy who would regularly ditch work, not come back from lunch, show up several hours late for his shifts, often hung over and he could not be fired. They would argue that the formal and informal counselings were not "disciplinary action" according to union rules and that disciplinary action must be taken in steps. When my manager followed those steps they fought him every step of the way arguing over errors as small as 2 minutes when describing how many hours late this employee was. It seemed that their primary goal was to promote incompetence. Now I'm in New Jersey and here I was forced to be in a union. This is not a right to work state. The latest union contract was approved in 2004 and expired in 2008. Since then, nobody has had a raise. There have been no cost of living increases in pay. The union however, has continued to collect dues and somehow convinced people a couple months ago to almost double the amount of dues being paid for them to do nothing. The only direct dealing I have had with this union was when I was counseled (read scolded) for working outside my job title. In other words, I worked a bit too hard, going above and beyond. This is something that's usually rewarded by employers, but the union doesn't want anyone to work too hard. The only thing the union has been doing aside from that is constantly sending emails bashing Chris Christie. They said he hates workers because he doesn't want people fired for gross misconduct (read: criminal activity) to collect unemployment benefits. Now they're complaining that he's a horrible person for wanting employees to actually pay a very small amount towards their insurance and pensions (which used to be free). Of course none of the new laws going into effect would matter if they'd negotiated a contract in the last 3 years. I'd be more than happy to be without them So what are your experiences? Do you feel unions have helped you?