By Doug Cunningham

The American public supports unions by the widest margins in at least twenty years, according to a Peter D. Hart Research Associates poll done in December of 2006. Pollster Guy Mollineau says there's much more approval of unions today than during the Reagan era.

[Mollineau 1]: "The attitudes toward organized labor have really changed in a pretty fundamental way. Now only a quarter of the country has what you could characterize in some sense as an anti-union perspective."

Mollineau says this strong public support of unions could make the time ripe for labor law reform. And he says the approval of unions is widespread, across all demographic groups and geographic locations.

[Mollineau 2]: "What's most striking is how well-regarded labor is in almost all groups. There are some differences by income for example or regions of the country. But, in general what we find is pretty strong approval across a variety of demographic categories. In the south for example, although approval is a little lower than in other regions of the country, it's still 60 percent approve, just 29 percent disapprove."