LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Closed shop laws have a lot to do with lack of competitiveness.This is more or less correct, though incorrect in some important specifics. For example, it wasn't necessarily semi-slave labor.
The best example of what happened is with automobiles. When protections that made foreign automobiles non-competitive financially were removed, the reality was that Japanese automobile manufacturers were creating vastly better cars.
So company's like Toyota and Honda rapidly gained auto share because their cars were just better, and a big part of that was that those companies needed to compete in a natural environment for a long time, whereas Ford and GM didn't.
Look at India - India has a lot of protectionist vehicle policies, and their native brands are fucking trash garbage. If they ever remove the protections their native brands would be annihilated.
You must employ union labor. Every employee must be a part of the union. The union has the state government in its pocket, and oh hey, guess what, time for some new wage negotiations that can be adjudicated in a state court.
Guess what, now you have to pay new, completely unskilled employees 22 $/hour, (and this is fifteen years ago)!
Yeah, that's real competitive.