Someone please explain how the working class has a chance . . .

Someone please explain how the working class has a chance to improve their financial condition without strong labor union.

Start a small business and buy your factors of production (and your personal consumption goods and services) from the most efficient (typically non-unionized) suppliers.

This is what I saw growing up in rural (now suburbanized) eastern Virginia where there was a tradition and legal structure against working class unions. High school drop-outs would start auto repair shops, beauty parlors, retail stores, or construction companies. The successful ones had large homes, fancy cars, RVs, and boats by the time their children entered college.

Of course, if you accept the premise that you have to put your life in the care of large, monolithic organizations, then you are probably correct that you need to have a seat at the table. When policies are being negotiated between union bosses, corporate owners, and regulators in Washington, then the union member can rest well at night knowing that the portion of his wage he is forking over in union dues (as well as the portion to company pension and the portion in taxes) guarantees that his interests are being looked after in those smoke filled rooms.

very few people have the ability to run a business. The last few years are a clear indication that many people can't even handle their pay check and credit cards.

http://smallbiztrends.com/2008/04/startup-failure-rates.html

Less than 30% of new businesses last 10 years.

very few people have the ability to run a business

Then they sit on the couch and reap the benefits of others competing to serve their needs better.

There will be those who try to take advantage of these people's lack of ability.

If you are truly concerned about those with a lack of business acumen, you should try to figure out how you can cooperate with them so you can simultaneously fulfill your goals in life and assist them with their goals:

• Offer them employment on better terms than they have currently.
• Offer classes in business skills.
• Offer a product to make it easier for them to run a business.
• Offer to bargain with their employer on their behalf for a better wage.

If you want to exploit these people and don't mind causing them harm, then use violence to stop them from taking advantage of such goods or services. Force them to belong to your union/company/government and to spend their lives meeting your goals rather than their own.

I am thankful that I worked for the City of Seattle for 30 years and have been retired for the last 15. All my kids are doing OK but it is a new world out there and I worry about the grandkids.

For the first 6000 years of human history 80% of the population lived in poverty. A large middle class is a post WW2 phenomenon and I think we are regressing to the norm.

things are not looking good for most people. see

http://www.businessinsider.com/22-statistics-that-prove-the-middle-class-is-being-systematically-wiped-out-of-existence-in-america-2010-7?utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=BI_Select_071510_Personal

(another site on which to argue)

So US wages come down another ten bucks and Chinese wages rise ten bucks. Soon there is a world wide parity of labor wages and no labor unions. Then what happens?????????

with the best business (profit) climate for international corps.

In other words, all other things being equal, the jobs will most always go to the countries with the worst standard of living for the working class. The post WW2 growth of the middle class was a freak bubble.

From Angelo M. Codevilla in "America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution" (page 3):

Similarly, modern labor unions are ever less bunches of workers banding together and ever more bundled under the aegis of an organization chosen jointly by employers and government. Prototypical is the Service Employees International Union, which grew spectacularly by persuading managers of government agencies as well as of publicly funded private entities that placing their employees in the SEIU would relieve them of responsibility. Not by being elected by workers' secret ballots did the SEIU conquer workplace after workplace, but rather by such deals, or by the union presenting what it claims are cards from workers approving of representation. The union gets 2 percent of the workers' pay, which it recycles as contributions to the Democratic Party, which it recycles in greater power over public employees. The union's leadership is part of the ruling class's beating heart.

The point is that a doctor, a building contractor, a janitor, or a schoolteacher counts in today's America insofar as he is part of the hierarchy of a sector organization affiliated with the ruling class. Less and less do such persons count as voters.

A successful business starts in a small one. as long as you have an initiative and perseverance in making your business a success.