Unions have been in steep decline in America for decades. Perhaps, this might be okay if the incomes of those so working had kept pace with the increase in productivity during those same decades, but clearly that is not the case, as corporate profits are quite strong, but wages so being paid, are not. It must be remembered that human beings need income in order to live and to support their family obligations, and in absence of any individual labor power, those seeking employment are pretty much in no position to bargain for a fair wage, let alone a living wage, and with the government offering little of substance to help those that labor for a fair wage, the result is the ever-greater disparity between those that have it all, and those that have little or nothing.
The biggest reason for why domestic labor is in such sour shape at the present time, lays at the feet of those multinational companies that this government has continue to permit, almost without restriction, to produce and to manufacture their goods in those countries that are favorable for cheap labor and lax environmental conditions and then to thereby sell those goods all over the world, with a minimum of tariffs, duties, excise taxes, or income taxes, so applied, whatsoever. Obviously, for those companies so creating goods outside the borders of this nation, in which, the playing field of how much it costs for them to manufacture such a good, is not a level playing field -- they see such manufacturing done under their aegis as both a way to stay competitive, and also clearly as a way to increase profits for the prime benefit of those that are of upper management as well as for those equity investors in said companies.
This thus signifies that in absence of robust unions, that domestic labor will continue to be underpaid, underappreciated, and underutilized in America, for multinationals clearly have alternatives to domestic labor which they have availed themselves of, again and again. So then, there should be some sort of reasonable rules enforced by the government, applicable to those multinationals that do a significant amount of their manufacturing and production overseas, of which, these companies, for instance, would be taxed accordingly so that we wouldn’t have a construct in which a privileged portion of the private sector reaps all of the benefits, whereas the government ends up stuck socializing all of the costs so as to take care of their own in this country.
No matter how efficient domestic labor is, they cannot compete on a cost basis with third world nations. So too, appropriate environmental laws and safety concerns so imposed in America, are easily circumvented by the moving of manufacturing overseas to third world nations, that typically do not have the same sort of restrictions and regulations for their environment, let alone their labor, as America does. At this point the only possible hope for domestic labor to get some sort of fair deal, going forward, is for its government to take a more active role in seeing that labor is considered to be an institution worth defending -- because clearly this is not a fair fight, and in consideration that this is a nation which is of, for, and by the people, our government needs to demonstrate in principle the living truth of those words, or continue to live the lie.