[breakyerself]

This is the opposite of what's true. Unionization is good. What's not good is using slavery adjacent labor to undercut good paying jobs in the US. US trade policy destroyed Detroit.

Nobody wants to go back to the bad old days of 16 hour days in the factory just to live with 16 other people a tenament and then die broke in a gutter when the machine takes your hand off.

[JumpCrisscross]

> US trade policy destroyed Detroit

US trade, fleet environmental standards and yes, the unions turning into an insular political force each destroyed Detroit.

[AnimalMuppet]

I agree except for the word "political". Unions destroyed Detroit by their cost far more than by their politics. Particularly the cost of the pensions and the work rules.

[JumpCrisscross]

Political as in the political incentives of union leadership is to constrain entry into their electorate and extract rents for their members.

[guywithahat]

If unionization were good Flint wouldn't have been in such a poor state it could lose clean water access. What is true is auto jobs didn't leave the US, they left Michigan, primarily for right-to-work states. The same story is true for most of the rust belt; a lot of heavy industry jobs didn't necessarily leave, they just moved to Texas or the south.

Also unions didn't get rid of 16 hour days, market competition and regulation did that. Private industry unions have been consistently behind the private market in terms of benefits. The past you're talking about never existed.