You KNOW who is financing the UAW: auto-workers looking out for their jobs.
Until recently in Michigan that wasn't necessarily true. Now that there's right to work, union members can vote with their wallets - if the union doesn't represent them well enough to the company or their political desires, they can now quit the union without losing their job. The unions actually have to work to retain members, which means paying attention to what the workers actually want, whereas it used to be that they didn't actually care what the workers wanted, they only needed a majority to vote to strike or not in order to wield their power.
I suppose they can even start competing unions, or affiliate with competing unions if they think the existing unions don't adequately represent them.
While the unions are supposed to protect and advocate for the worker, there are too many instances of individual workers being thrown under the bus or ignored by the union for me to really believe the rhetoric. If you are active in the union, politically, and get to know the higher ups in your local, then you have better protection than the average worker who simply pays their dues. It's unfortunately
very much a good boys club if they'll even take your case for wrongful dismissal, unless it affects many employees.
Union members don't want to support or work with free riders and shouldn't be forced to do so ether
The unions already differentiate between employees and union members, and what little protection they offer from unreasonable firing doesn't help so-called free-riders. There are a lot of other benefits to joining the union - often they'll have supplemented health insurance, disability, etc. They provide counseling, job placement, training, and a host of other benefits that "free riders" wouldn't get.
With a right-to-work law, they will simply need to more fully justify their existence. One of the many problems with forced participation is that they didn't have to fight for the individual employee - and often don't. If someone is fired by the company against union rules, the union could choose to take the case to arbitration or not, and they would't lose anything but that one member. But most union members know people who've been fired while under the union's supposed protection without cause, and the union failed to do what the union supposedly promises - advocate for the individual and the group.
If the union doesn't want "free riders" then the union will now have to do a better job communicating their benefits to their members, who can now vote with their wallets as to whether the union is actually doing a good job or not.
Under the forced membership rules, the only power members had against the union was whether to strike or not, and with some unions requiring only a simple majority, nearly half the members could disagree with the union before the union took notice and considered their needs.