Years ago, after I got out of the Navy, I worked as an ET at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It was operated by the University of California. There was a vote for us technicians to unionize. I did not feel the need for a union and voted that way. A majority of those that voted felt the same way and so the union did not get into LLNL. LLNL is now under different management and I have heard that it is nowwhere near as benign as UC was.

I now work at SLAC, which is managed by Stanford University. There is a union for various trades. It strikes me as a fairly weak union, but it does afford some basic protections. I can see the need for a union at SLAC due to the way management treats people. If there was a vote again for a union and I was allowed to vote, I would vote for one at SLAC.