My union uses unpaid interns to answer the phone, send out mail, and generally do stuff. The secretary makes a journeyman rate of $72 an hour.

A friend was asked by my union to fly to Washington DC and do sound on a Union production about the greatness of unions. They asked her to pay for her own ticket, and told her that since it was a union production about unions, they couldn't afford to pay her a union rate.

I got screwed out of about eight thousand dollars and approximately 600 hours because when I wrote "lynnwood, WA" on my change of address card their unpaid intern assumed that couldn't be right and changed it to "Lynwood, CA" because why would a Los Angeles union sound mixer move to Washington? So they didn't give me the secret handshake instructions to be a Los Angeles union member, even though I was effectively the union boss on the production.

So instead I ended up being dragooned into the National IATSE organization, which is such a dumpster fire it makes my union look like Seal Team Six.