I think conditions are ripe for unions to start coming back.
THe labor market is tightening up, but managers are stuck in the past, where they had unlimited access to cheap Third World labor, and could get away with being petty tyrants.
Workers with degrees, and technical skills are getting tired of being treated like burger flippers.
The definition of insanity is..............
Unions can't come back because even with tariffs, it would still be cheaper to produce elsewhere. When wages and benefits went too high, that's when companies started to bail out. They couldn't compete against overseas countries.
There was also a domino effect as well.
Years ago when I worked in medical, our company was building a pharmacy for our home customers. This was back in the early 80's and at the time UPS was on strike. After our Monday morning meeting, we all gathered around the coffee pot for a refill, and struck up a conversation about the UPS strike since it had an effect on us.
Nobody really knew our newest employee (the pharmacist) and during the conversation, she stomped away abruptly. We had no idea WTF her problem was. Nobody even said anything to her.
The coffee crowd broke up and I was the last one standing at the coffee pot when she returned. In her hand was her pharmacy magazine. Highlighted was an article about the strike.
The article pointed out that a senior UPS driver made around 55K a year. A pharmacist at the time made about 62K a year. In anger she said "If I only knew what I know today, I sure as hell wouldn't have went through all that education and expense to be a pharmacist. I would be over there (pointing to our overhead garage door) delivering packages in my brown uniform. How dare they go on strike? Do they know what me and my parents went through for my education? I should be the one on strike!"
The only way to draw people to the medical field was to pay them more which they had to do. Now our health insurance is too expensive for many to afford. The domino effect of unions.