I disagree with your idea that it is my personal responsibility to take a worse position, job wise, financially, when it doesn’t just affect me, it affects my family. Especially when the potential for improvement is just that, potential. Not guaranteed. Not automatic. And it comes with the risk of retaliation by the business. Sure, people died back in the day, but that’s not something that has to happen anymore. We have labor laws.

This entire paragraph shows how little you understand about the importance of unions. People died back in the day because we didn't have labor laws, and unless you've been paying attention, they've been steadily being rolled back.

I'm glad you want to care for your family, but like I told my mother about how she sent us to a private school as kids: You were more concerned with your own family and lifting up your own family that you forgot that lifting up everyone's families would be better in the long-term for everyone, up to and including your family. You're missing the forest for the trees, it isn't about what you get out of it, it's about what society gets out of it. If you really don't feel like you have personal responsibility to society beyond your own family, congratulations, you're a capitalist through and through.

I didn't need to start a union, I got a job that already had one.