Republican Party

"Like people in the 1970s, people today want to return to the so-called “Golden Age” when there were lots of jobs in heavy industry that were union, paid really well, and provided excellent benefits. They imagine that “Buy American” might help to bring all that back."

"The problem is that employers have long since turned on the labor movement and driven down working conditions so far that is very hard to return to that world. The strategy being pursued by employers today is totally different from what unions faced in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Steelworkers and Auto Workers had these great jobs."

"And, of course, that seeming “Golden Age” puts the focus on only one particular sector. Steel jobs were not naturally wonderful jobs with pensions and health care and high salaries. They had been hideous jobs where people worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, until the Congress of Industrial Organizations built powerful unions in the 1930s and changed all that."

"Manufacturing is only 8 percent of all employment in the United States. What we need is a massive grassroots movement that makes all jobs—whether they are in manufacturing, or in service, or in agriculture—into really great jobs with union protections."