Whilst acknowledging and accepting the rest of your post I doubt it feels quite so childish when people happily stroll past a picket line, happy to take the security the union offers them while doing nothing to support it. However, while I may find that distasteful many do not. That is their choice.
I appreciate that I'm in rather sensitive territory here amongst some, understandable, views that are of importance to the individuals affected............ BUT
Whether railway staff like it or not, issues such as picket lines, scabs, even the very idea of a Trade Union itself, are often viewed by 'outsiders' nowadays as mildly amusing eccentricities - more appropriate to those times when Scargill and the miners were taking on Thatcher [hence why it's referred to so often].
I know that is NOT the view of many/most on this forum - but then I guess the majority on the forum are themselves railway staff who might fall in to one of the categories I mentioned. I can easily see where DarloRich is coming from, and I'm sure he speaks for many others, but I'm not at all convinced that the old ways of doing things are still the best, or only, ways of resolving disputes etc.
I really don't see that the RMT has been very effective in recent times - seemingly ever since they lost Bob Crow. I doubt that's just a coincidence. The present leaders seem very poor by comparison, their rhetoric seems even more 'dated' and irrelevant than whatever Bob Crow used to say, and their appalling media releases have often been utterly embarrassing. It seems that the RMT is still more concerned with foreign ownership, shareholders, FatCat managers etc etc rather than clearly explaining what the issues are concerning their staff, safety, security etc.
It's very difficult to see how the RMT can hope to resolve disputes for their members if the Union itself can't raise its own game to become a far more professional, and respected, organisation.