[chessturk]

> Is this opinion rooted in the American hatred/demonization of unions?

More or less. Unions are viewed as anti-corporate (rather than an balancing factor), anti-job, and anti-right wing by the Republican party. Even someone who believes in unions in the US would see unions as political.

Some of this comes from machine poltics of the early 1900s, but that being a real factor in American democracy has passed from living memory for the most part. It is much more rooted in the corporate supremacy of the 1980s with strikebreaking and what not.