Unions themselves might be scum, but the people who work in them know how to use tools and understand manufacturing. How many of us took wood-shop classes in middle or high school, for example? Today, these classes don't exist. Schools don't want to be held liable by parents, the money is re-allocated to other BS courses, or kids just aren't interested in doing these things and can't wait to play their Wii when they get home. I'm not saying the taxes, bad trade policies, regulations, and the unions don't play a part in our erosion of manufacturing, because they do, but this generation of kids just aren't risk-takers and thinkers like the previous generations.
The biggest union and the only ones growing today are government unions.
They don’t know how to make anything.
Many non-government union members don’t know how to make anything. Longshoremen may know how to rig certain gear, that’s not making anything.
Part of the thrust of the modern educational system is that pretty much *everyone* goes through a college-prep curriculum in high school. This is just insanity.
If you look at the Germans, for example, they still have a very strong vocational training system that starts in those years. Not everyone needs a college-prep education, and the country would be much better off if more kids got vo-tech training instead of many of the junk college degrees being handed out these days in semi-useless majors like Sociology or Womyn’s Studies.