> In countries where unions do work, that is another door to go search for help.
That assumes your union rep is inclined to help you. In practice (not principle), they have the same incentives as the other managers and HR do in this story. The union rep could decide that the harasser is more important to their union, politically, than you are, and decide not to take action.
Plus, the union can simply terminate your membership as retaliation. For a closed shop, that's equivalent to firing you, but without many of the legal protections that come against wrongful termination.
> Which is why I added the remark "[in countries where unions] do work", not when they are just yet another way to take vacations.
That's not a matter that's specific to a particular country, though. It's inherent in the nature of a union structure (and arguably inherent in the nature of any hierarchical human structure, which is a superset of "unions").
You can find situations like the one I described in any country, not just the US.
Inherent in hierarchical structures, yes, but unions don't have to be hierarchical. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism There are numerous such functioning unions throughout the world. Small compared to bureaucratic unions, most under various forms of state repression, but very successful and effective in labour struggles they participate in.
Yeah my Union (even researchers and engineers were union members until we became "managers") had its ranks filled with senior folks who were rotating in from corporate. There was more collusion than conflict I think.
