Unionization is the wrong response to increasing manufacturing efficiency. The correct response is finding something else to do, with the help of subsidized retraining and education, if you prefer.
Only it's not "increasing manufacturing efficiency", it's taking advantage of worldwide labour supply (including child labor and labor under extreme exploitative conditions) _in addition_ to all-too liberal outsourcing and import laws to make wages enter a race for the bottom.
I'll take unionization.
Since there are safety nets in most first world countries, I'll take globalization over unionization as the best way to improve global standards of living over time.
If we really cared about those people, why allow their wages to be lower and their working conditions be far worse than ours? Just because we can, or because it's better than the alternative (substinence farming)? Well, and slavery is better than famine, should we take advantage of African countries with food/water supply problems to have them work for next to nothing?
The truth is, we "care" about them as long as they keep producing cheap stuff. We care about the cheap stuff. If they wanted equal pay, we could not care less about their fate.
As will happen, eventually, the industry people will jump to the next country that happens to offer them lower wages in a comfortable business environment, e.g Latin America or Africa. Like they moved from the US to China in the first place, crushing US working/middle class in the process.