Union leaders argue that their struggle for higher wages and/or benefits is against the employer and their major weapon in that struggle is the strike. They're wrong on both counts. By itself, the strike is really not much of a weapon. Instead, union power lies in its ability to prevent employers from hiring other workers in their places. They can achieve this either through labour laws or violence. 

Without legislation or violence a strike is little more than a mass resignation.

The classic example is the 1981 air traffic controllers' union strike in the US. From the unions point of view the strike became a monstrous disaster. The union could not prevent the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) from hiring other workers illustrating how the real struggle of labour unions is against other workers. The union's ability to demand wages that may exceed its productivity depends on its ability to prevent employers from hiring replacements.

Closer to home compare the recent Windsor and Toronto "garbage strikes".
In Windsor the residents were allowed much freer access to the dump sites than in Toronto. In Windsor contractors cleaned out the dump sites nightly, in Toronto this didn't happen. In Windsor the nightly removal of the garbage from the dump sites was indeed a restriction in the union's attempt to prevent other workers from taking their place. In Windsor the citizens were allowed to do neighbourhood park maintenance without restriction. Not so in Toronto where volunteers were apparently bullied into not doing the maintenance.

The net result being that the Windsor taxpayers got a much more attractive settlement than the Toronto taxpayers.

All this happened with the basic support of the police for the folks and their individual rights. In your column you reference that the union has the right to stop the people and take a reasonable amount of time to explain their position and that the police were correct in allowing this. Suppose I and a few friends or associates were to appear one morning at starting time at the entrance to a CUPE parking lot. Would the same CUPE members be agreeable to being individually stopped from entering work listening to 15 minute explanations on the evils of unionism with a total delay of three to four hours?

Not Likely! I speculate that within five minutes there would be more police on the spot than at a Yonge Street shooting.

Competition is always between either seller and seller or buyer and buyer - not buyer and seller. If Walmart wanted to rig the game in order to charge higher prices, it would try to get Zellers and Sears (other sellers) out of the market not you and me (buyers). Unions represent sellers, in this case sellers of labour services. They benefit from restricting entry by other sellers (workers) and having more buyers (employers). This aspect of the conflict between unions and other workers is seen by the fact that when there's a strike involving violence, it is workers who disagree with the union who are most likely to be assaulted, injured or killed by union members, not employers.