This essay sheds light on the top reasons why you should never join a labor union. Moreover, the advantages and disadvantages of being a unionized employee are elucidated in this essay. Moreover, how to make the money in order to afford to finance your future without joining a labor union is delineated in this essay. There are a myriad of reasons as to why you should completely desist from ever joining a labor union. First and foremost, the union initiation fee and monthly union dues can be exorbitant and will render your pittance of a wage even lower. Union dues can costs hundreds to thousands of dollars per year and will render your low, minimum wage that cannot even provide you with sustenance even more infinitesimal since you union dues are deducted from your paychecks. Moreover, your union dues will be earmarked towards paying for the amenities, benefits, pensions, and lofty salaries of labor union officials. Second, joining a labor union is of dire consequence since you will never qualify to receive a pension from the labor union. The union's pension funds you pay into without receiving a penny in return could instead actually be earmarked into funding your own retirement fund in the form of a traditional IRA. This way, when you reach the retirement age, you may have some semblance of passive income coming in from your investments if you stayed if you alternatively invested part of your paycheck into procuring income generating assets, such as bonds, index funds, and stocks with high dividend yields, instead of paying hefty monthly union dues to be a unionized employee. Third, if you join a labor union you will then consequently loose negotiating power with your employer at your job. Unionized workers not only comprise loosing the trust of their supervisors, but will also be perceived as being less collaborative than their non-unionized counterparts. Unionized employees will not be able to negotiate their own work schedule hours nor hourly wage, unlike their non-unionized coworker. The non-unionized employees do not already have union-negotiated pay and union-negotiated work hours already set forth which is why they may be able to possibly even better negotiate their compensation and work hours than unionized coworkers who are bound to the terms and conditions of the collective bargaining agreement. Fourth, the labor union can become defunct at any given moment and anything earned from being a unionized employee may no longer be provided by the defunct union. Additionally, the political climate is also not always favorable towards unions and can undermine the union's longevity, especially as the union faces declining membership rolls and is viewed in a negative light by most workforce participants. If you have been a unionized employee at your job for over twenty years and the union becomes defunct then you could no longer have access to unionized benefits, such as no longer having access to health insurance plan offered for unionized employee. Fifth, unionized employees are also viewed less favorably than non-unionized employees since employers are under the impression that the union is not looking out for their company's best interest. This stigmatized perception unionized employees succumb to also means that they are less apt to be promoted based on merit and are deemed less trustworthy than their non-unionized coworkers. This stigmatized perception unionized employees may encounter can render the work environment more insalubrious, hostile, and less cooperative. In spite of all the ample deterrents to join a labor union, there are some advantages appertaining to being a unionized employee. First and foremost, if you are a unionized employee with seniority than it can be far more arduous for you to be laid off or fired by your corporation even if you are incompetent and do not meet the company's standards. Moreover, companies cannot terminate their unionized employees for any discriminatory reasons, such as age.