Without furlough schemes the world would not have stopped.
As for all the positives suggested, that may have been true and valid earlier in the last century. But now? Nah.
Case in point, when I started my current post, we were given two 45 minute breaks. This overwhelmed the rest room, so they dropped it to two forty minute breaks.
You'd have thought that the world had ended the way people were carrying on.
In reality, we still get FOUR times the legal break allowance.
The unions may have established the concept of a legal minimum, but beyond that they serve no purpose.
Look how helpful they were to the agency employees at P&O Ferries.
Without the union involvement they probably would have been employed directly decades ago