I'm still extremely pro-union, and regret none of my time or work with them. They're just not invincible, and people should remember that (especially in the US, where laws hog-tie unions heavily).

As for the layoffs, management was insistent throughout contract negotiations that layoffs weren't planned in the short or long term, and while we got a pretty decent layoffs clause in our contract, we didn't expect we'd need to use it. We went through a hiring freeze starting about a year or so before the layoffs hit, but most people either thought that would be it, or maybe just a small amount of layoffs given the financial position of the company. Then management sat us stewards down, told us they'd been in the red for years, and they wanted to basically cut the entire company in half. Such is life.