Why Unions Matter

Kevin Drum makes a nice, and frequently overlooked, point about why unions matter for reducing inequality.  The Church has gotten this for over a century:

If you're interested in government policies that actively favor the working and middle classes, you need to have some kind of substantial political interest group fighting on their side. That's Politics 101, and right now unions are pretty much all we've got. They aren't perfect, and they frequently act only in their own narrow self-interest, but without them there's no organized opposition to the agenda of corporations and the rich. Warts and all, they're worth supporting until something better comes along.