Recently the picketing against fast food retailers was being done by community worker organizations. Virtually no employees.
These are organizations designed to encourage and educate about unionization and most importantly to picket business.
The reason community worker organizations have become important to mainline union organizations is that they are not authorized to act as unions, not authorized to solicit ballots for union votes and not subject to legislation governing unions and worker relations.
What does this tell us?
It tells me that this is the death throes of American unionization.
In the San Francisco Bay area citizens are outraged at unions about to strike at the only major transportation underground vehicle that connects the east and west Bay. If BART is allowed to strike it will create havoc for well over 200,000 commuters who ride BART and about +200,000 others who drive or take buses.
San Francisco residents complain that union members are already highly paid and receive outrageous retirement healthcare benefits. Ordinary people don't.
It is hard to see where an environment such as this is going to result in increased union membership. It is even harder to see public support for unions when they primarily cause rising taxes and they destroy businesses on a regular basis. Unions are unwilling to make a trade-off between reducing pay and keeping their jobs.
Unions only survive in government agencies kept alive by contributions to the Democratic Party. That is a dead end road as Americans get organized as they did in liberal Wisconsin.