Unions matter. But not every union, in every industry, using the same blunt instrument, is still serving the people it claims to represent. In this episode I look at what is actually happening when service industry unions go on strike — who absorbs the pain, who escapes it, and why the claim that strikes are aimed at employers, not customers, is increasingly hard to defend. The KVB strike in Cologne is a perfect case study. So is the infamous union-vs-union power war on German rail. This is not an anti-union episode. It is an honesty episode.