Personally, I was raised in a family that believed that in a just society people
who work hard at full-time jobs wouldn’t live in poverty and wouldn’t need to
rely on charitable handouts to feed their families. That means high wages and
unions.
I think a lot of the issues that conservatives raise about unions are generally pretty silly. The most common ones are that unions make American labor uncompetitive with other countries that are less union friendly and that they don't really represent the people they represent. The former is difficult to defend, as one could make the argument that excessive CEO salaries would have the same impact on competitiveness, no? No conservatives really complain about that sort of thing. And since unions are democratic it is definitionally impossible to say that union leaders don't represent labor interests: if they don't, they're voted out.
I must say that I'm a bit worried about passing EFCA. Unfortunately, there are a fair amount of moderate Democrats from conservative states who are wholly dependent on corporate contributions to keep their seats and, as a result, will vote against the act. I wonder if Obama would be able to induce such people to vote against the act but to vote for cloture. Because if he can do that, he can lose eight (or seven) Democrats but still win.
