Reich: Unions are almost extinct in America because we’ve chosen to make them extinct.
Manufacturing is starting to return to America but it’s returning without many jobs. The old assembly line has been replaced by robotics and numerically-controlled machine tools. Technologies have also replaced many formerly unionized workers in telecommunications (remember telephone operators?) and clerical jobs.
But wait. Other nations subject to the same forces have far higher levels of unionization than America. 28 percent of Canada’s workforce is unionized, as is more than 25 percent of Britain’s, almost 20 percent of Germany’s.
Unions are almost extinct in America because we’ve chosen to make them extinct.
Unlike other rich nations, our labor laws allow employers to replace striking workers. We’ve also made it exceedingly difficult for workers to organize, and we barely penalized companies that violate labor laws. (A worker who’s illegally fired for trying to organize a union may, if lucky, get the job back along with back pay – after years of legal haggling.)
Don’t blame globalization and technological change for why employees at Walmart, America’s largest employer, still don’t have a union. They’re not in global competition and their jobs aren’t directly threatened by technology. Walmart is a microcosm of the American economy. It has brazenly fought off unions. But it could easily afford to pay its workers more. It earned $16 billion last year. Much of that sum went to Walmart’s shareholders, including the family of its founder, Sam Walton.
http://robertreich.org/post/41745594892
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denying that the collapse in manufacturing had anything to do with same?
How shameless. 
goals.
Nobody said any of that but you, but this sort of break down (and concomitant inability to rationally explain one's position without name-calling) is also part of your schtick.
It's not like you just started posting this garbage!
Cheap, non-unionized labor hurts American workers, weather that labor takes place here or abroad. There is no way to reconcile your Laissez-faire economics with workers' rights. It's not possible.
But you know that.
EVERY one of those countries also runs a trade surplus with the United States (that means that we run a trade deficit with every last one of them, too.)
impoverish the American worker, which is why no "cheating" is required. These trade deals are lopsided, such that we have massive trade deficits will all of our largest trading partners, including Canada, Mexico, (NAFTA) and Germany (EU powerhouse).
I was asking you a question, not making an allegation.
The entire international trading system is a conspiracy to impoverish the American worker - but not the German worker or the Canadian worker or the Australian worker? American exceptionalism in a perverse way, no? Again, it's those damn foreigners who are out to get us, not our own 1%. I can't argue with that.
These trade deals are lopsided, such that we have massive trade deficits will all of our largest trading partners, including Canada, Mexico, (NAFTA) and Germany (EU powerhouse).
Of course, the US has no "trade deal" with Germany as it does with Canada, Mexico and 18 other countries. We trade with Germany without a 'trade deal' as we do with the whole world other than the 20 countries with which we have 'trade deals'.
We have a slight (not 'massive') trade deficit with Canada ($270 billion in exports, $298 billion in imports in 2012) and that deficit is wholly due to the fact that we import over $100 billion in oil annually from Canada. (In terms of manufactured goods we have a large trade surplus with Canada.) Given this I find it difficult to blame our trade deficit with Canada on a 'trade deal' since we will import their oil under any 'trade system' you can come up with.
If we simply cut off oil imports from Canada, we would have a huge trade surplus with it but you can imagine how high the price of gas would be in the US. I doubt you want to go down that road.
