https://robertreich.substack.com

05/13/2025

The reason many working-class Americans want manufacturing and mining to return is not that they loved the work. In most cases it was grueling and dangerous or mind-numbingly boring.

It’s because that work paid far better than the service jobs in fast-food and retail outlets, hospitals, and hotels that many have been forced to take in their absence.

And the reason those manufacturing and mining jobs paid far better was that they were unionized. Unions gave workers in manufacturing and mining the bargaining leverage they needed to force employers to offer better pay (along with more job security and safer working conditions).

But since the Reagan years, corporations have been busting unions. In the 1960s, a third of all workers in the private sector were unionized. Today, just 6 percent are.

And if there’s one thing Trump and his cronies don’t want, it’s unions giving workers more bargaining power. He has gutted the National Labor Relations Board, eviscerated OSHA, and is filling the Department of Labor with corporate stooges.

So even if it were possible to restore manufacturing and mining to America — even if we stopped foreign trade and forced American consumers to pay enormous sums for stuff made here, even if we filled the atmosphere with carbon, even if we prevented new technologies (including artificial intelligence) from replacing manufacturing workers and miners — the American working class would be no better off if their pay is still in the cellar.

A return of manufacturing and mining jobs won’t make Americans great again. Good-paying jobs will.

The easiest and best ways to raise the pay of working-class Americans are to (1) strengthen unions, (2) raise the minimum wage (which hasn’t been increased since 2009), (3) expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (a wage subsidy) for lower-income workers, and (4) institute a universal basic income.

Will Trump do any of these things? No chance in hell.