Servicing Needs

Nearly every action humans execute serve some type of need.  Almost everything we do in some way is an attempt to satisfy a need.  Conflict often occurs when an action satisfies one's needs at the expense of another.  In my experience we can survive only a short time without satisfying certain needs.
Food for 30 days.
Water for 3 days.
Air for 3 minutes.
Hope for 3 seconds.
I have no idea how long humans can generally survive without community.  We are in fact social creatures and the most basic social unit is the family.  Much of what we do is not only in the service of a personal need, but in the service of a need of our family, which in turn indirectly services that inherent need for community.  In addition to family there is a fundamental need to be close to those similar to oneself, this is commonly identified as intimacy.  This need drives us into social groups, such as political parties, unions, clubs, sports teams, and other organizations.  Perhaps this is an out growth of a need to be understood?  There is another need I wish to address, the need to chart your own destiny, the need to have some form of control over your life.  The need for autonomy.  In separating from England the colonists served both the need to be closer to those like them, their fellow colonists, and to chart their own destiny by declaring independence.  Now that we live together in this amazing country we still have these often opposing needs to service.  How do we maintain a sense of community and autonomy?  How do we collaborate together to meet the needs of teachers, firefighters, and nurses to make a living for themselves and their families and the needs of the community at large for education, emergency services, and health care?  I do not know the best answer for a specific community, but I can say that the needs Unions once addressed are now codified in federal law.  Unions no longer are a means to the ends of equitable and ethical employment practices.  Unions have in most cases become an end in themselves, they exist for their own existence.  This is know in some circles as a "self-licking ice cream cone"  Unions now consume more in dues than the benefits they produce.  The increase the price of labor in order to pay union dues reduces the number an employer and consumer in turn can afford.  Americans are independent enough and strong enough to bargain for the wages and benefit they desire without having to pay a union to hold meetings and rallies and all manner of overhead. 
I am all for well paid teachers, firefighters, and nurses, and we can pay them more when they no longer have to pay for union bosses.  Union bosses who served their purpose last century can find another honorable way to meet the needs of their family without breaking the budgets of states across the union.  The need unions served honorably in the past no longer exists, federal law now supports the fluid functioning of the free market to ensure maximized wages and maximized employment.