Nobody wants to go back to the bad old days of 16 hour days in the factory just to live with 16 other people a tenament and then die broke in a gutter when the machine takes your hand off.
US trade, fleet environmental standards and yes, the unions turning into an insular political force each destroyed Detroit.
Also unions didn't get rid of 16 hour days, market competition and regulation did that. Private industry unions have been consistently behind the private market in terms of benefits. The past you're talking about never existed.
You can ask any economist what happened. They won't blame unions, they'll blame the proliferation of industrialized economies. America cannot compete in a world where poverty-labor outperforms America's standard-of-living.
Cities do not fall from grace like that for no reason; Detroit and Flint fell from grace because they made it impossible to invest in the cities future. It's easy to say who cares about rideshare drivers, but if you can't operate companies in CA then people will stop founding them there, and then good engineering jobs will leave. Everyone once thought MI would be prosperous forever too
I just told you the most commonly cited reason, and instead of arguing that I'm wrong, you're arguing orthogonal to my point. Detroit became less special as time went on and there was nothing that Americans could do about it - the culprit was neoliberalism. Unions or not, that is the reason why the economy could not persist.
So let me rephrase my question: barring unions or state-subsidized housing, how was the US supposed to prop-up a manufacturing economy in the 1980s?
The best thing the US government probably could have done to prop up the manufacturing economy in general would have been to spread knowledge of modern best practices, like those promoted by W. Edwards Deming. Plenty of people were willing to improve but simply hadn't been trained in how to do it. For auto manufacturing specifically, legislators and regulators could have phased in emissions and fuel economy rules more slowly to give manufacturers a few more years to react instead of forcing them to hastily modify old powertrain designs in ways that drove up costs and ruined reliability.
It such an anachronistic song.
Tell that to any movie star, director, writer, NFL starting quarterback, soccer star...
Otherwise, the people you list are very well-represented by private agencies. Unions like the SAG can benefit the lower-level people in some respects, but they mostly serve to gatekeep their industry and encourage films to be made outside their jurisdiction.
On the other hand you have retail workers and food service workers, who are largely not unionized. So what can we blame their low pay and status on?
Talent and genius and innovative ideas being rewarded (or not) is largely orthogonal to union membership. It is a factor of demand and supply, and prevailing profit margins in that industry. That is all.
Detroit declined because factory workers are more fungible than movie stars. Their unions didn't pay attention to the threat of foreign labor or competition by superior foreign firms. Their management also became complacent about competition and chose to blame it on unions.
Germany is very famously pro-union and boasts a strong auto industry. What did they do differently?
Mostly mine seem to innovate new ways to fail at hiding that they've been smoking in the car...
The German auto industry is in a world of shit, actually, but I don't think they can blame the unions for that. Their "works council" model is very different from a typical UAW stronghold in the US. The unions (and in many cases the state itself) are active partners in corporate ownership and management, so they have a stronger incentive not to kill the golden goose.
Like the American auto industry, and also the Japanese, they've been asleep at the wheel as EVs eat their lunch. For a long time it was quite strong though.
> It has been steadily laying off employees and cutting wages. Unionization has done nothing to prevent this
It can't. Unionization can't raise wages and it can't lower wages. It can provide job and wage stability. It can ensure non-union workers are laid off first. But if there's no money or the industry is doing poorly it's a management or international trade issue.
Speaking with a friend around me who worked in automotive, the unions are a double edged sword. They provide security for you, but they also provide security for a bunch of folks who realized they won't get fired if they put in the bare minimum. My friend found this incredibly frustrating.
Many unions here put large amounts of money toward political goals I don't support. If I want a job at such a company, under Michigan state law I can be compelled to pay the dues, even if the union is working against me politically. Until I can work somewhere without being forced to pay union dues, I am not interested in those jobs, even if they pay more.
Why should anyone, union or not, be fired for that? Not promoted, not given raises, sure that's fine. The "bare minimum" is by definition the least acceptable level of productivity from a worker.
> I can be compelled to pay the dues, even if the union is working against me politically
Depends on what that means. Politically its job is to get you the most pay and job security possible.
Yeah they could be better, but people are overjoyed when they are able to get into UAW work because it means they won't have to struggle to survive anymore.