Why would you want to keep your local union while leaving your national union?
Unions are in the business of being paid to provide workplace representation services. However, after state laws granted unions monopolies on providing workplace representation and allowed them to force public employees to pay dues, unions became unaccountable. As a result, union bureaucracies snowballed and became more expensive and less responsive to their members.
Local bargaining units do much of their own negotiating with the employer and may not need the assistance of a larger state or national affiliate. Keeping your local simply means that a local bargaining unit won’t be paying a state or national affiliate for services they may not need.
Public employees who simply want a collective local voice and an advocate in their workplace have increasingly been required to fund more and more union “affiliates” that provide neither of those services.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in dues are annually sent off to national affiliates, state councils, AFL-CIO councils, regional affiliates and more. For most public employees, more than half of the dues they pay is sent to people who will never set foot in the employee’s workplace.