Take the 'long stride': reinvigorate the labor movement ... then watch the economy recover.

• Author: Hindery, Leo, Jr.
• Position: IT (STILL

IF THE U.S. ECONOMY is going to regain long-term strength, then first and foremost we need to restore the vibrancy of our middle class. The historic strength of our economy has always been a robust middle class, growing from the bottom up, that provides the vast purchasing power upon which corporations thrive.

Let me make a provocative statement here. If we want to improve the economy and strengthen U.S. industry, then we need organized labor to be a lot stronger than it is presently and a truer partner in the conduct of our nation's business. One profound result of such a strengthened partnership would be more equitable compensation and a whole lot less income inequality.

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Ninety percent of America's workers have had stagnant wages for the past 20 years. And half the nation's income is earned by 10% of taxpayers and the other half by the remaining 90%. On the labor front, organized labor is weaker than at any time since its formative years. Union membership dropped to a record low in 2010, with only 12% of the overall workforce and only 7% of the private sector unionized. By contrast, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking comparable data in 1983, over 20% of the workforce was unionized.

In some corporate boardrooms--trust me, I've seen it--there is too often a desire to cut labor costs persistently, and thus to engage in a global race to the bottom with respect to workers' wages (and rights). In these boardrooms, labor is seen as standing squarely in the way of globalization.

But globalization's core principal of 'comparative advantage' is certainly about a lot more than the cost of labor. For example, China's cheap labor comprises, on average, only about 10% of its comparative advantage in manufactured goods vis-a-vis the U.S. Ninety percent comes from its insidious combination of environmental degradation, illegal subsidies, currency manipulation and intellectual property theft, with which no American company or worker can ever compete--nor should they.

Endeavoring to make the AFL-CIO ever smaller and of lesser moment is no solution to global competitiveness. Nor is embracing the 'trickle down' economics of President Reagan, which has given us record-level income inequality. Let's be frank, when did anyone reading this publication ever spend more because he got a tax cut? All that happened, really, is that we got richer.

In fact, reinvigorating workers and their salaries would, I contend, be a 'long...