Yeah, I have the choice of about 3 unions where I work, all of which are big unions because there can only be one per industry in Australia. All three have wasted way too much time and members' money on vanity projects that I don't want to join.
Don't know about "designed to" but corruption and abuse of power is absolutely a consequence of this, indeed. Almost feel that this was designed to decredibilise unions (which are essential to democracy in my view) because they ended up strongly reassembling mafias: pretending to protect the people while actually only looking out for your own interests...
