> But there's a good chance your grandfather had the cojones to join a union to fight for better working conditions.
Sure, there's a good chance: if he was white and middle-class, a statistically decent bet on this website. But otherwise there's a better chance your grandfather was deprived of a decent job by a union, so that the union members could earn more (at the expense of the hypothetical grandfather and the employer and its customers.)
Which isn't to diminish the part about fighting for better working conditions, mind you, which was real enough... but just to point out the checkered nature of this history.