How does a union have an effect on what you described? Can't a union worker not be fired for poor performance?
Unions make it harder because you actually have to document the poor performance in order to show you’re complying with the rules. It effectively makes the cost of firing (and thus, hiring) higher.
Seems that aiming twice and shooting once is a good thing when the cost of a miss is destabilizing someones entire personal life for their entire family potentially
I fail to see the issue with that as well.
The sentiment I often see online is that "fewer rules = more freedom". And as I grew more experienced, I find that the opposite is true. In a lot of cases, freedom is upheld by the rules themselves. And this is not an orwellian "war is peace" kind of thing, but rather a GNU Free Software kind of thing, where the perpetuity of the freedom is guaranteed with the rules of participation.
I think that this discussion went in the same direction with the unions. But, of course, freedom in itself can have different interpretations for different people.