Striking writers allow the liberal blogosphere to extol the virtues of unions. Matt writes:

Obviously, the entertainment unions are pretty small in terms of membership, but they’re one of the best examples out there of the idea that working people can advance their interests through unions even outside of traditional “hard hat” or public sector industries.

Now he’s quite right, and there are reasons why we might want workers to be able to better advance their interests, particularly if we’re concerned about the way in which producer surplus is divided between labor and management. It’s important to note, however, that the interests of unionized working people are often in direct conflict with the interests of society at large. In some cases, the conflict results in something like higher prices for consumers, which we may feel is an acceptable price to pay for the empowerment of workers. In other cases, the outcome is not so benign.

DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee would like to fire a substantial number of workers in the DCPS central office. Perhaps someone would care to defend the central office bureaucracy, but I certainly won’t. It is the case, however, that:

Union leaders representing teachers, bus drivers, custodians, boiler plant workers, teachers’ aides and other workers of the 14,000-employee D.C. public schools symbolically locked arms yesterday in a fight against legislation that would give Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee power to fire 545 central office employees.

The word “representing” here should be taken very, very lightly. If you’re a teacher, you’re in the union whether you want to be or not.

Chris Hayes says he’d walk the picket line with the writers if they were striking here in Washington. Would he lock arms with the education unions, too? How ought liberals to reconcile the “good” behavior of unions with the “bad”? Unions are there, after all, to look out for themselves.