Try to sell this message to the tens of thousands of USW workers out of jobs because their union continuously jacked up the wage/benefits package of US steel workers. Increased employment costs w/out corresponding increases in productivity led to the death of the Big 3 Steel makers here in the U.S. Read the book by Pittsburgh Press labor writer.

Read the book by Pittsburgh Press labor writer. What book?

You mean Steel and Steelworkers: Race and Class Struggle in Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh By John H. Hinshaw?

You don't have to read far to get the idea, there are folks who are capable of applying some amazing arithmetic - like imagining one can pay less and get more in a for profit system. Thus our health care system that profits from the misery of our families, friend, and neighbors.

The only thing that's limited is the intelligence of the anti-labor folks.

The myth of the "American Dream" is simply that, a story that isn't true for most Americans. It isn't empirically true and it has the effect of denying the very real barriers to upward mobility and denying the need to eliminate those barriers through policy changes. It denies the "race to the bottom" in wages that international corporate globalism has had on workers throughout the world. It denies the real need for union organization that gives the individual worker strength. It may be politic to talk about the American Dream as though it were real, but it's never been real for most Americans. Truth is, the post-war " economic expansion that created the middle class in America was largely the result of government policies like the G.I. Bill, the massive expansion of educational opportunity through the National Defense Education Act, and the expansion of the union movement, made possible by the pro-labor policies of the Roosevelt New Deal before the war.

There are many issues raised here that don't have satisfactory answers in either the the pro-worker or pro-owner camp.

• It's abundantly clear that wealth has been directed away from the many and toward the already rich few. This is the Republican version of the American Dream.

• The labor union model has failed. It has failed because the interests of owners have prevailed at the international level [with the support of Democrats] as well as at the national level. Labor never does well when a huge pool of desperate job-seekers exists. Free trade agreements have kept that pool growing.

• The end of cheap energy may mean that we have a less-than-zero-sum game. Unions have been just as guilty as business boosters in selling the myth of infinite growth. We need reality based economics for the expensive energy world. The pie cannot continue to "get higher". Accepting reality actually makes reducing economic polarization more important, but reality is harder to organize around than is fantasy. It's time for the labor movement to stop taking the easy - no win - path.

Amazing, again no mention of the impact of millions of grateful to make anything, 3rd world workers and Unions, such as SEIU, working hard with your dues to increase that trend. Read the new Univ. of South Carolina report or the older Harvard report. Immigrant workers will and are working for less wages and the Union policy of supporting Amnesty only gives encouragement for more to sneak in for Amensty, Border Patrol records prove this. FYI; U.S.C. new study shows Construction workers earning LESS since 2000 not more, and Carpenters Union in Portland was just caught using an Illegal Alien to recruit more Illegals.

Basic supply & demand logic, unlimited supply of workers equals Companies paying whatever they hell they can get away with. LIMITED supply of workers forces companies to pay more to find & retain these employess.

With 54 Million working age workers NOT working(U.S. Dept. of Labor-July 2007), I question an unlimited supply of foreign workers, so did Cesar Chavez, Union Farmworker organizer in California. He understood this many years ago, why don't our Union leaders?

The two biggest threats to the American Dream are corporate greed and government social engineering. Together they have succeeded in creating an economic environment where the average worker looses to the power of inflation and is increasingly taxed each and every year. While big business does everything possible to minimize employee earnings for the working class, socialistic politicians want to control the lifestyles of the general public - everything from housing choices, mobility choices to choosing the food we eat. That makes corporate America get rich quick schemes and power hungry political forces that use the tax code to dictate the standards of living partners in crime.

Sorry, the book is "And the Wolf Finally Came" (The decline and fall of the American Steel Industry) by John P. Hoerr, 1988 former labor reporter for the Pittsburg Press.

I also read the blog (attached to the original piece by Stern at the bottom of his Huff Post page) by a janitor who organized a union that has negotiated to double his current $6.85 per hour wages in 5 years. The guy feels that gives him hope for the future. I think it's no more than a crumb from the feast. Look how the cost of living (and housing) has escalated in past decades. In five years he's gonna need that doubled income just to stay where he are now....not making ends meet through no fault of his own. It would not even be enough money here and now. Especially factoring in that we are all supposed to save for retirement.

I pray for us all caught in the big squeeze, but fear it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. There is always the threat for many workers that their jobs will simply be taken out of the country. Thankfully Craig the janitor does not have that risk. But though the elite who skim the wealth of our country for themselves will pat themselves on the back for making donations (and taking the tax write-offs) to charities, they are blind to the plight of the workers who create their wealth for them. The irony never registers with them. And the upper classes revile the working poor, as they prey on them for their last nickel.

It's going to take a miracle, or decades of deprevations, to get workers in the US to unionize. Unless workers DO get up from in front of their TVs and unite, and yes there will be sacrifices to be made....we are doomed to stay the course. That probably doesn't bother a lot of folks who make a living wage, but it should. Because we are a nation of consumers, and people who can barely pay rent food and utilities are not buying goods, no new cars, dining out, or vacationing. They have no disposable income. And that will eventually impact the entire economy, as more and more workers fall short of the rising cost of living.

And even if they do unionize they are then at risk from their own union officials skimming and raiding pension funds, diminishing the health care coverage, and other nefarious deeds. Something of a moral crisis overall, isn't it?

And for every minute that goes by that our elected officials do not make moves to eliminate the road blocks to every American making a livable wage (And $7.80 isn't livable! Double that might nearly be there, for now.)....well I just consider that taxation without representation.

It's going to take a miracle, or decades of deprevations, to get workers in the US to unionize.

It's going to take more than more hard times to get workers to effectively unionize. As Horace Mann, the father of public education once put it, "It may be an easy thing to make a Republic; but it is a very laborious thing to make Republicans; and woe to the republic that rests upon no better foundations than ignorance, selfishness, and passion."

The widespread ignorance of how to govern a democracy leaves workers powerless and only capable of sitting around bellyaching, in spite of the fact that rarely changes anything for the good. So until leaders take on the problem of the governing incompetence of the governed nothing's going to change for a very long time - except for the worse.