I have been involved in unions three times in my life. The first time happened when I was a teenager in high school and started working as a checkout boy at a grocery store. A condition of employment was that I had to join the store union, which was a California state law. According to Bernard D. Meltzer, a leading labor law expert at the University of Chicago Law School, "union security provisions in employment contracts require that employees be members of the signing union or that they receive financial support as a condition of employment by the union. signatory employer” (2277). This is called closed labor, meaning only union members were allowed to work. So I had no choice but to join the stores union. I immediately noticed that the union collected dues every month, but I never received any benefits as a union member. Under the union's work rules, management was supposed to give its employees at least six hours' notice if the employee was scheduled to work. In my case, this would rarely happen. I was constantly told at the last minute that I had to work and that if I didn't come to work I would be fired. I protested to the union representative (who was my union representative), but nothing ever changed. I complained to union management and was ignored and fired. I was frustrated and angered by the union's propaganda claiming that they were fighting for all workers' rights, when I knew full well that was not the case. It was around this time that I began to wonder whether unions really cared about their members or whether they only cared about themselves and their members' dues, and whether Unions were still necessary in today's society. paper ......Virtual reference library. Internet. October 15, 2012. O'Hara, S. Paul. “Unions”. St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. Ed. Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast. Flight. 3. Detroit: St. James Press, 2000. 72-75. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Internet. October 26, 2012. Prah, Pamela M. “The Future of Unions.” CQ Researcher September 2, 2005: 709-32. Internet. October 26, 2012. “Right to Work Laws.” West Encyclopedia of American Law. Ed. Shirelle Phelps and Jeffrey Lehman. 2nd ed. Flight. 8. Detroit: Gale, 2005. 362-363. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Internet. October 15, 2012.Rubin, Jennifer. “Work, the movement’s dangerous wish list.” Commentary 128.3 (2009): 20-25. Academic research completed. Internet. October 21, 2012. United States Department of Labor. Union Member Summary 2011, January 27, 2012. Bureau of Labor and Statistics. Washington DC print. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm