Steve, you strike me as a good man, someone I could sit and have a beer with and enjoy a good talk. So here is my position in a nutshell, maybe you'll have something to respond with.
I used to be about as anti-union as it is possible to be. After seeing a whole lot of dirty deals done by "management" types over the years, my opinion is changing. I'm not even referring to the well known scandles we all know about, like Enron and Tyco and Global Crossing, I'm talking about things that I saw with my own eyes, knives stuck very deeply into my own back.
No pity for me, I've done very well thank you. I've had my own business and been independant for many years now. But after seeing what I've seen in my own life, and after seeing what we all have seen with these recent scandals, I'm changing my way of thinking.
I find myself thinking that maybe a totally free market isn't such a good thing after all. I find myself thinking that maybe unions aren't such a bad thing. After seeing the debacle of electricity "deregulation" in California I find myself thinking that maybe some things really are better off being in the public sector.
So, what do you think?
I usually take a VERY dim view on unions, seeing what they have done to the infamous "Rust Belt" (where I am). While there may well be a place for unions, given the unique leverages that they have over companies (can't discipline their members, can't do anything in case of a slowdown, can't permanently get rid of them even after a frivilous strike), we would be better off without them than with them.
Regarding the Kalifornia power crunch, the method of "semi-'deregulation'" that they used is what caused the problem, not the fact that things were somewhat deregulated. Nobody could own more than 2 pieces of the 3-piece power structure (generation, transmission and local delivery), the companies still in transmission/delivery couldn't sign contracts that were competitive, the generators essentially couldn't build new plants unless they were the highly-inefficient "renewable" power plants, and EVERYONE had to deal with a government agency to keep the power grid balanced (the ISO has had serious troubles keeping it balanced related to the fact that it is a government agency; latest in a series of threads here).
One more thing; the retail cost was still regulated. This is bad for 2 reasons. First, any incentive to conserve when supplies were tight (and wholesale prices went up) went out the window because as long as the juice flowed, there was no pain felt. Second, with the squeeze in "profits" (which were also regulated to a maximum but not a minimum), potential projects to increase capacity were discarded due to lack of cash.