Manufacturing and other unskilled professions that were union jobs, that allowed people to live a middle-class life, are disappearing both because unions are disappearing and because of the global nature of the economy.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When certain branches of the economy become obsolete, as in the case of the steel industry, not only do jobs disappear, which is obviously a terrible social hardship, but certain cultures also disappear.
Jobs are disappearing from every sector of the economy, from engineering to health care workers, forcing hundreds of thousands of families into unemployment and low-paying jobs.
As more workers lose manufacturing jobs as companies cut back, some are being forced into lower-paying retail jobs. But they still have union cards in their wallets.
This is the crux of the problem: because the Republicans and the right wing have been successful in almost eliminating unions, everyone else has suffered as a result.
What's going on in this country? Unions stand against those trends. We've got to somehow insulate the robust American economy from this global economy that seems to want to devour our standard of living.
The real people who suffer when business is leaving or not successful are the people in the middle class.
The middle class has disappeared. We have a highway to poverty and no roads coming out.
Private sector labors unions continue to suffer losses in their membership while public sector and service unions grow.
We of the sinking middle class may sink without further struggles into the working class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose.
Unions go hand-in-hand with a strong middle class.