Been in the T&G, now Unite, for ever, or at least ever since i found my first proper job.
All the best jobs i’ve had with decent T’s and C’s have been unionised, some other jobs have been ok but without any benefits of any kind ie proper sick pay, bereavement leave etc, and unionsed cos pay for licences medicals DCPC in company time and proper protective wear, been made redundant 3 times in my driving life, the two times in non unionised cos i got the bare min, in the unionised job an extra £grand for every year worked on top of an already decent package, my lad walked away with about £11k from a job he’d only been in about 18 months, again unionised.
Is it worth joining if you’re the sole member in an otherwise crap job, probably not.
Can a union change things, yes if enough of you become members and the company recognise the union, and you’re both firm and fair minded, if the company’s on its arse already you can’t get blood from a stone.
A good union with carefully selected shop stewards (the most important decision a member can make is who to elect, those who don’t self serve and are fair minded) also serves another purpose, in that a good steward and union should help keep a bit of discipline, discourage half wits from doing stupid things before they end up on the desk of management, a union should work hand in hand with management to keep a happy ship going in an ideal world.
The transport industry if its on a downward spiral only has itself to blame, its been desperate to cheapen the job, make it idiot proof which has only served to allow ever more idiots into the job, sooner or later the penny will drop that scraping the skills/attitude/competence barrel ever lower isn’t working and they’ll have to try something else but i ain’t holding me breath for that change.
For specific things like deliveries to RDC’s where you’re herded in a room as if on remand, then no i don’t think unions are the answer, the answer to that is to not work for companies who deliver to such places, when the questions start getting asked at the top, ‘why do we not have any deliveries again today and no food on the shelves’ they’ll do something about it.
The irony being those supermarket drivers who drive directly for those same RDC’s are usually treated well.
Having to hand keys in is purely because of half wits in our own industry, who have driven off with a fork truck half on the trailer, unfortunately these days one size fits all so all are assumed as thick as those bods, i can’t see this changing to be honest.
Not all parts of the industry are like that, some specialist sectors still try to treat you as a sensible intelligent person, sadly idiots are getting into those sectors too, so the changes are coming.
The silver lining about half wits on unionised jobs is they often don’t join the union (cos £14 a month to benefit from an extra £200/800 a month is just too expensive i tell ya 
), so when they do the things they do, they get no union representation.
