So if your boss decides to cut your pay by 50% suddenly, that's essentially the same thing with the same options for the employee? Live with it or quit?
There's not contractual obligation on the part of the employer to actually do what they say they will?
Its not that unions are somehow pure wonderful organizations. They fail like any human-run org for the similar reasons.
The unions are required because only a union is "big enough" to stand up to a company, and to sit down at the big negotiating table. You, an individual, can easily just be told to go pound sand.
If an individual tries to go against this Farmers Insurance takesies-backsies of remote work, your recourses are to: follow their orders, quit, or refuse and make them fire you. As an individual, you have NO power.
At a union level, those choices are more numerous and back-breaking to the company. They can't just fire all workers. Minor sabotage in the forms of work stoppage and slowage can also significantly hurt a company engaged in this sort of crap. And the union is "big enough" to have a sit-down and negotiation to resolve this.
You're never going to get a honest sit-down and negotiation as an individual when the CEO wants something. But that union will.
More or less, yes. Most companies don't do 50% pay cuts even under extreme circumstances, preferring to go ahead and lay people off, but many companies will do things like wage freezes or temporary pay reductions to try to avoid layoffs.
There's not contractual obligation on the part of the employer to actually do what they say they will?