Today at Netroots Nation, Senator Debbie Stabenow said we need to quit exporting jobs and go back to exporting goods. I'll suggest we should also export the union movement.
If those foreign workers who now do the exported jobs were paid nearly as well as the wage scales we'd like to keep in this country, we'd be very competetive. The last I heard, Americans were still the most productive workers in the world. One or two decades ago, the exported jobs were going to China. Now Chinese workers expect better pay, and many of the lowest paying jobs are going to India, Sri Lanka, and places in Africa.
Apparently China has run out of dirt-cheap labor. In perhaps 20 to 30 years, about one third of the world's supply of very cheap labor, the working fraction of a billion people, has been "used up". There are still another billion or so people in the Indian subcontinent, and another billion in Africa, but when the working portion those people start expecting better wages, that will be the end of the era of cheap labor.
In the late 1990's I read an article in Scientific American about the end of cheap oil. I think the same will happen with cheap labor. The world has already reached about three fourths of what the UN predicts will be the peak population. After south Asia and Africa, there won't be any more huge populations to exploit.
How soon will workers in China, India, and Africa demand better wages? My guess isn't worth more than you've already paid for it, but we can bet it will be sooner if those folks can unionize. What are the barriers to unionization in those parts of the world? In trade negotiations, we should bargain for those barriers to be taken down. Senators like Debbie Stabenow should promise to filibuster any trade treaties that aren't negotiated with union leaders at the table.
And American unions (and European ones, that may well be stronger) should reach out to some young potential labor leaders in China, India, and Africa. Show them what it looks like in various countries where labor gets a fair sized slice of a nice big pie. Wouldn't it be delicious irony if some of those young leaders went home and ended up teaching real economic justice to governments that claim roots in the rights of the common man?