More on the motives of EFCA proponents

In an article posed on The Chronicle of Higher Education website, Peter Dreier, a professor of politics at Occidental College and founder of the urban policy think tank Progressive Los Angeles Network (PLAN), asserts that the Employee Free Choice Act would be a good thing for a wide range of liberal causes:

The labor movement is still the most effective political force for electing liberal candidates at the local, state, and federal levels. And once in office, pro-labor politicians are typically the strongest supporters of the environment; the civil rights of women, homosexuals, and minority groups; universal health insurance; Social Security; affordable housing; and funds for public schools and higher education. A strong labor movement thus benefits other agendas and causes that have been under attack by conservative forces in recent years.
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If unions became irrelevant, our society would become more unequal and individualistic than it already is. That is not a happy prospect, especially for those of us in higher education, which relies on the public's support in many ways.
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If labor's liberal allies — like the Sier-ra Club, the National Organization for Women, and the NAACP — do the same, and if Democrats gain more seats in both houses of Congress in 2008, the act has a good chance of passing. With enough supporters in Congress, even a Republican in the White House would face a veto override. A Democrat in the White House would guarantee that the act would become law.
More than any other liberal interest group, unions provide a counterweight to the political influence of the religious right and other conservatives. Even people otherwise likely to vote Republican, like gun owners and those who attend church weekly, tend to vote Democratic if they are also union members.

Many of these causes, of course, are worthy ones supported by liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, managers and front line workers. But others are far out of line with the mainstream of current and prospective union members. The decline in union membership can likely be attributed to some degree to labor's decision to align with and spend dues money on social causes that are repugnant to the people who pay those dues. A large number of working men and women own sporting firearms, attend church regularly, consider themselves to be individualists, and are, in fact, social conservatives. Some of them don't like belonging to a "liberal interest group." But as Professor Dreier makes so clear, the Employee Free Choice Act is not about respecting individual thought. It's about gaining and using paternalistic and collectivist political power.

George Orwell, whose name is often mentioned in connection with the Employee Free Choice Act, once noted:

It cannot be said too often - at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough - that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamt of."