> I would get threatened with grievances for trivial acts like carrying a single lightbulb myself without a union worker.

That whole thing about requiring union workers to do tasks is stupid. One year I was attending a fan convention and decided to check out the rules for vendors. The convention center used unionized labor so one of the rules was that the vendors were limited to carrying like one case of stuff over to their spot. All other moving and setting up had to be done by the union workers. I get what the protection here is, it prevents loopholes for getting around using union workers at all (which, if it was possible to do, would make a union ineffective). But hell, why can't they pay the union workers as if they would have to do all the work but then let people decide if they want the union workers to actually do something or not?