What is the unionization rate among certain key industries, I.e. Auto workers........
My wife is a school teacher. Not all teachers are unionized, and if you look at education in a broad picture probably only a small percentage of educators are really unionized, yet the teachers union is very powerful in reality. It’s a game with averages. If you and I eat an average of one sausage a day but I eat two, you’re going hungry...........
The unions are powerful enough to influence political policy making and that makes them part of the equation (problem). A good example of this is the new health care law or the GM bail out etc where they pushed for sweet deals and got them. The rest is about semantics........ The unions ARE influencing the political process and that’s undeniable.
I don't advocate for unions in any way. But, they are not even a major reason for the decline in manufacturing over the last ten years. As several posters have stated there are a myriad reasons for the destruction of our manufacturing base.