Does anyone think "quality" when they see "Proudly Made by Workers of the (Name the Union)" on a product?
I don't. Every time I notice the little UAW sticker on my Mustang I think that Ford somehow managed to build a pretty good car despite its labor force.
I don't know if that's inherent to unions or just to American unions. Unionized German workers seem to turn out pretty good cars, so maybe it's the latter.
I would say a lot of that is stigma left from the height of powerful Unions, especially from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. It's interesting, because the height of their power was really the darkest of their days, as corruption had rather strong stranglehold on a lot of them.
The key to Unions and Management is to keep the pendulum towards the middle. When it swings too far in favor of one side, things get ugly.
That's what happened back then. Organized crime controlled the largest and most powerful Unions. The Unions that were in the news, and therefore became the face off all Unions.
Their handlers used tactics that consisted of unfair demand (to line their pockets), and strike if not agreed to.
So we have a situation where companies have to raise their prices above what should normally be expected to compensate the organized crime aspect of otherwise well intentioned Unions.
Regular customers are now paying high prices for a product that can't compete in the upper end side of the market.
So we label it as junk.