Are Good Wages and Benefits Really That Terrible?

Those of us who have been to law school had to write an exam known as the LSAT.  When I wrote it, there was a section where you had to read an article, like a newspaper editorial, and then pull out underlying premises and assumptions in the piece.  An opinion piece in the National Post by Terence Corcoran this week reminded me of that test.
The article was about unions, so even before you read a word, you expect it to be negative (since it is the National Post).  The main factual point in the piece is that (largely unionized) public sector workers earn substantially more in wages and benefits than (largely non-unionized) private sector workers. Corcoran then develops an argument that this fact is grounds for banning the right to strike of public sector workers (which was one the promises Harper made, and then quickly rescinded once the coalition emerged).
How does Corcoran take the fact that unionized workers are better treated than non-union workers and turn it into an argument to ban public sector strikes?  He develops a number of premises.  The argument flows something like this:
Premise 1: The main reason for this discrepancy is that public sector workers ‘abuse labour laws’ by occasionally striking, or threatening to do so.
Premise 2: By striking, or threatening to do so, public sector workers ‘extract above market wages and benefts’, and this is a ‘national disaster’.
Premise 3: It is ‘alarmingly unfair’ to the millions of Canadians who have elected not to join unions and not to pressure their employers for better pay and benefits by exercising the right to strike that public sector workers have ‘dramatically’ better conditions of employment.
Conclusion: Therefore, public sector workers (private sector workers too?!) should not have the right to strike.
A core assumption in the piece is that the ‘dramatically lower’ non-union compensation levels are more desirable, because they reflect ‘market’ rates.  So, to buy the argument, you need to accept  that non-union wages and benefits are the correct measure of what compensation should be, and the higher rates for unionized workers are distorted owing to the ability of union members to pressure employers by threatening to strike.
How does this argument fit with the statistic I referred to in an earlier posting that explained that income inequality is growing dramatically in Canada?  The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is disappearing.  If we accept Corcoran’s argument that the right to strike increases wages and benefits, then presumably that gap would be even larger if we banned the right to strike.
Is it possible that the ‘dramatically lower’ compensation levels in the non-union workplaces referred to in  the article contribute to this problem?   No doubt the owners of a business do better when their employees earn less and have no benefits.  More of the pie goes to them, which might help explain why the rich are getting richer.  But is that really good for society as a whole, or for workers in general?
Does it strike you as strange that better wages and benefits are treated as a terrible thing in this argument?   Is it not equally possible to argue that the ‘facts’ presented in this story show the benefits of joining a union?